Brialee Turner

I wish I could tell you
her story,
but the rage of chemicals
and the discrimination of smoke
choked her out
before we could
listen.

Waves of warming,
a seething jealousy of oil
and plastic…

These were her raindrops.

I know that if I were to
have stayed in the toxic
rooms I rented while making
my way in this vast
space, the black mold
would have infected my lungs
and I maybe wouldn’t have noticed.

Then again,
all living things seem to know
when their life-source
can’t reach their soul.

I regret that we don’t have her
last words
to us.

I am devastated that I couldn’t
dig a well around her to protect her from
the poison,
or hold an umbrella over her
spreading width so that she
didn’t absorb the success of capitalism.

Someday, she thought, I won’t
have to struggle to grow in
a place that I was meant to thrive.

Instead, she died
with her roots entangled in the very spaces
where she was designed to
grow.