Devotional
Wesley Sexton
A wilted white lily sits curbed, wanting
a witness to its betrayal. Up-dug, it
suffocates between trashcans filled with
Fancy Feasts and Triscuit sleeves, roots
stiff and stale like dried worms. Bits of
black dirt cling and feed, helping the lily
with its living, but still it misses
that shut-eyed pilgrimage through Earth,
wanting again to become a color. Soon
I will return, shovel-handed, and head to
the nearest public place, dangling my plant
by its neck like a button-eyed doll
I’ve spent years telling secrets to. Soon
I will find a brilliantly sun-spangled spot,
impossible to miss, impossible not to mark
with an innocent American perennial.
Soon I will place the lily into its small
hole, and soon, I will think of you, Future
Person, moving irretrievably through your life,
desiring impossibilities, loving people
for the sounds of their living and the way
they let you listen, pausing to walk
near shallow water. I can hear your shoelaces
flapping against your ankles. I can see you
gazing at the blooming flowers. I hope
you feel somewhat accounted for. I hope
your heart beats deafeningly in your chest.
Wesley Sexton holds an MFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, Tar River Poetry, the Indiana Review, the Greensboro Review, Story South, Lake Effect, and Salt Hill.