Rodney Wilder: The Wound Is To Know Joy
Photo: Joanna C. Valente
To the Sakura that Called My Collarbone Destination Enough
To the sakura that called my collarbone
destination enough,
tucked into my pulse point like
the tree’s own concerned fingers: O
springsnow,
O rosewater
Pentecost.
I have not decided this life a minuet in
some time. But here you are, all of your
falling pastels pirouetting out of sleep. I
spend too many of my hours wishing
to become again the blanket,
the shadowsnack, the soft vanish I just
got up from, my fingers never really not
reaching
for somewhere kind to relinquish again
this collection of trick candles. &
here you are. Hanami, this burden’s
eagerest fusillade. Pink like the nose I’m
nuzzled a clammier firework by on not
enough & too many mornings. Hanami,
rewriting this scuffed calligraphy with
cherry blossom & wind. Every petal
a Holy Ghost descent addressed to this
congregation of sighs I sometimes find
like snuffed wicks in my rib cage & still
get to believe an enshrinement. A thing
sacrosanct despite the smoke, despite
my own blown breath, my own
singed fingertips.
The wound
is to locate joy an ever-quarry ever-out-
side of this ark I put my hand to & say
adrift.
The wound is to know joy only as
that which I must approach with
beartrap hands, forgetting how it, in fact,
already chose whatever nest I had to offer.
You are so alike, little petal, little
rose quartz dove cooped
in the dip of my clavicle.
I would promise
to waltz for the waltz’s sake, to remember
this vicarious fire & how it
pointed inward like why
were you ever looking elsewhere? but
I’m already forgetting, aren’t I? Already
setting myself up for exhaustion stalking
noncombustible altars &
expecting to bum a light? My sparks
required no coaxing to call themselves
mine. & look how easily I can leave your
surrogate graces on the sidewalk. It’s like
it never happened.
Rodney Wilder is a biracial nerd who bellows death-metal verse in Throne of Awful Splendor and writes poetry, with previous work appearing in places like FIYAH and FreezeRay, Poets Reading the News and Words Dance, as well as his newest, nerd-themed collection, Stiltzkin’s Quill. He likes nachos, analogizing things to Pokémon, and getting lost in Oregonian forests with his co-meanderer, Brittany—the Sapphire to his Ruby. Find him on Instagram at @thebardofhousewilder.
