three poems by jillian thomas
By Jillian Thomas
berry picking
picking barely
blued berries off the
breasts of their mother bush
disappearing behind swashes
of red and staining the white
with pulpish grains
i am eight and all i know
are endless fields of greens and blues
my mother sees me sneaking
berries into the folds of my cheeks and
i smile as one falls to her feet
she simply shakes her head
and i follow her around,
her mallard duckling gathering
sapphires in my lemon laden hands
i am nine and all i know are fields
of reds and greens, strawberries
flourishing in the wake of navy tides and
i don't dare to disturb their coterie
with my hands still stained faintly
with blue
puzzle pieces
we are obsessed with outer space
with written in the stars and
star crossed lovers and
things only the stars have seen and
i am one of the fools ensnared in the
deliciously suffocating grasp of the pinpoints
of incandescence above the clouds
i am part of something bigger than myself
for once &
i am one of the puppets who writes
verses and songs about
the way the stars make me feel and love
and hate and fear and wonder
and how the powder of fallen stars makes
up my very bones
the movements of my aching joints
are dictated by specks of light
that tumble through space
without a care in the world
and i think maybe we care so much
about supernovae and burning asteroids
because the world we live in is much too
small for all our hopes and dreams
so we have to unload them into the waiting
arms of planets and moons
we have to belong with someone, even if
that someone is a dying star
and i wish i could hold
the too hot to handle
wrists of the constellations
with my fingers blistered
from trekking expanses to find them
and scream my secrets
to the abyss as it whispers
back to me
i wish astrology was real
i wonder if maybe once upon a time
the people who were commanded by
the stars to be bound together
were grown in the very
same breastbone of someone more all knowing
than either of them
(not as siblings but as fetuses destined to be
pushed apart and pulled together by the gods)
because how else could they
belong in the embrace of one another
& know each other
better than they know the color
of their own eyes
if they did not cling to each
other in another life
suspended in a sea
of blood?
and i think that soulmates
are a foolish concept but
maybe someone lazily hanging
from halted shooting stars
is smiling down on the people
who despite oceans between their
hands and hearts
found each other
from only the magnetic pull
of their souls that
knew each other from before even
the creation of their bones
and the universe had no choice
but to rip you down the center
in an explosion of blood and
flesh and limbs hurtling through
space and colliding with
the arms and legs and
heads floating around
to form a
makeshift person
your soul sibling’s heart
used to pump the blood running through your veins,
used to manually operate your lungs before
they were more than a sickly, half-formed embryo.
you owe them thanks, you owe them an apology.
you owe them your life.
Jillian Thomas is a 17 year old poet from Pennsylvania, who writes about love, loss, outer space, and mental health among other things. She has been published or is forthcoming in adolescence magazine, afterpast review, and ANGLES magazine. In her free time, she runs a literary magazine, listens to music, skis, plays chess, and naps with her cat.
