Kalyn Livernois

Here is the World

Let it be known that on this, the 2nd of March, in the year
of our Lord 2023, I cried because I burned the croissants.

I’d like to go straight to the moon, that diaphanous go-to
who receives all her light from another source, but I can’t

stop thinking about a piece of red onion—the poem I read
that made its existence into a geographical location where

life could be lived—and richly. How wonderful to live
at Onion: to cook, and clean, and dream by its milk-glass petals.

Wonderful to step on a lemon wedge and insist that it means
more than a bitter, yellow rind on the floor. Here is the world:

Cléa Vincent covering Ace of Base while the stranger beside me
smiles at the fiction in his hands. A woman wants to know her limit

on the number of flavors that can infuse her Italian soda
—her desire could shadow her forever.

A hoard of teenagers blows past the coffee shop on skateboards
so fast they create the wind. Minor gods.

I was already sad when I burned the croissants. Look, I know the mundane
details of the world are not a poem. Look closer—they are what we have.