Asha Dore
Notes for a Conversation on Flux
Noreen Ocampo
After Heather Christle
I want to start with an image A metaphor Your metaphor in which
the heart is a forest of boxes and my garden of bees never dies
The birds are full of blueberries and sing because they are so yellow
and alive Someone I love tells me that nothing is ever lost You are
someone I love You know I am sorry about the sorriness I hope
you wear Pluto Or the shorebirds and their tiny legs because you
looked so happy in the mirror It is too late I think to ask you about
the syllabus of holding someone small Of course I am someone
and somewhere I do not want to be But I want you to feel held too
I want the bees’ electricity to be soft and magical and the trees
to be trees I feel so young sometimes because I never listen Today
I gave in The real beginning image was of you staring into the stars
the heart is a forest of boxes and my garden of bees never dies
The birds are full of blueberries and sing because they are so yellow
and alive Someone I love tells me that nothing is ever lost You are
someone I love You know I am sorry about the sorriness I hope
you wear Pluto Or the shorebirds and their tiny legs because you
looked so happy in the mirror It is too late I think to ask you about
the syllabus of holding someone small Of course I am someone
and somewhere I do not want to be But I want you to feel held too
I want the bees’ electricity to be soft and magical and the trees
to be trees I feel so young sometimes because I never listen Today
I gave in The real beginning image was of you staring into the stars
Noreen Ocampo is a Filipino American writer and poet from metro Atlanta. Her collection Not Flowers won the 2021 Variant Lit Microchap Contest, and her poems can also most recently be found in trampset and Rejection Letters. She holds a BA in English from Emory University and is currently in her first year in the MFA program at the University of Mississippi.