Life said, See this dead bird
on your evening walk
where tree becomes root,
and now I want to stain
my hands with soil.
I want the throb of a strawberry
and the burst of red
flowering gums against tepid sky.
I want golden hour coffee,
the kind that will keep my chest
thrumming past midnight.
I want the warm milk breath
of anyone I love on my skin.
There are two sorrows—
what is no longer,
and what never was.
And still
what is yet to be lost
is a third thing.
Haunting, pulsating.
I ash myself in the glass wave
sunlight, windowing into
a future of ache,
the gnarl of past perfect.
Noelani Piters is a writer living in San Francisco. A recipient of fellowships from Indigenous Nations Poets, VONA, and PEN America, she was a finalist for the 2025 James Welch Prize and the 2024 Disquiet Literary Prize in poetry. Her work can be found in Poetry Northwest, The Hopkins Review, Poetry Magazine, The Offing, swamp pink, and elsewhere.
Artwork, “The Ineffable World,” by Tiziana Rasile