where lost & hopeless things go: poems

by Bryony Rosehurst

I hope the sunsets are worth the rain.

maybe when our uteruses start bleeding bullets, we’ll be free.

how can I leave / and take the sunflowers with me?

I think the broken parts can go on even when left unfixed.

this november is so golden that I am afraid of touching it;

but one thread holds on even in the rain.

maybe you did not become the butterfly. maybe you were meant to be much louder than a flutter. maybe the universe still needs you as you are.

maybe you watch sunsets every night and those moments between amber and blue are the only ones where you feel like you.

the ones who do not paint rouge and lipstick on their grief to make it look more charming;

and all at once stretch marks have grown over her scars as though to say look at you trying, growing, surviving where once you were only bleeding