Lauren Adkins

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Morphology of Belonging

The rain stays for days, but it can’t reverse
the burn. Vibrance flays, stripping back lives until they hang
like bare fish bones, ribcages exposed with no heart
to protect. That’s how this wisteria works, a slow woody heist, offering
a crown of brief violet that holds no evidence
of destruction, unless you study the vine. The heavy,
perfumed lace makes the tightening more digestible, easier to will-
fully ignore. I thought the sweetness was worth the debt—swallowed
a copper choke just to taste the safe petals, but now they fall
to dust and the strangle stays. The vine remains thick
all year, a thief that spread where the bark still lays
where we sat on it last, many nights ago, resting on a fallen corpse
to find the light. Our deaths know nothing
of the new growth erupting along its spine—we can only feel the rot. Salt spilled
skies grew darker as we held each other so tightly, I couldn’t tell if we were
embracing or merely preventing each other from standing up. I go back
here every time I forget the poison of your beauty. The once purple tresses
now sway skeletal and browned, undressed by the seasons—a violent
unthreading—changes, not as punishments—as rhythms,
the blueprint. The poison was always in the tightness
of the grip, not it's softest point. The grip must be let go
for the sap to rise again. Let the memory fall and nourish the soil, it can never own
the sky. Free, the bark lies scathed, scarred, deep
spiral grooves show what almost held. Watch
how it reclaims. The twists aren’t deformities but the evidence
of strength, of resilience, remembering the axis that has always held
things. The space is clearing, exposing where I stand, held
by a spine I had to build myself. Nothing’s invasion will stifle me anymore.
The spring belongs to no one.

Lauren Adkins is a graduate of Salisbury University with a B.S. in Psychology and a minor in Art. Her work has previously been featured in Salisbury University's literary magazine, The Scarab. She lives, reads, and writes in Salisbury, Maryland.