When In Spring We Sing
By Abigail Zajac, 19, Missouri
When in spring we sing
violently like the birds in the early morning.
Saying: get up you lazy hen it’s time to begin anew.
The days warm like summertime, the kind you want to stretch out, slow down, and play on loop
through your headphones every night before you sleep
so eventually, you’ll believe this warmth is yours to keep.
Free of mortgages or fees
just safety and pietas, a duty to the home I’ve found.
Taking pictures out the window on your phone
praying, praying you don’t forget
that each page of your story is allowed to be different
and some days will feel exponential.
The good inside building and building
until you’re full of iced lattes and happiness.
Believing you must be remiss because
you can’t even remember feeling like winter.
All you see ahead are open skies
and the too-vivid green of the pastures
and your arnold palmer tastes sweeter.
Suddenly you’re itchy because you feel too free
and you’re waiting for this moment to collapse
because you know life is just a house of cards
and you’re waiting for your ace to topple the whole thing over.
But it doesn’t,
and it’s “[in Just-]”
because in this moment you are enough.
This piece is meant to feel like your favorite faded photograph; a vintage polaroid, worn at the edges, a little fuzzy, and all too perfect. Consider it a snapshot of daily life, capturing all the little things. As a writer, I want to remember the good just as much as the bad. This poem is meant to represent all of the daily good we forget we experience. I was inspired by e.e. Cummings, a poet who I was reading at the time when I wrote this, and his simplistic way of conveying joy in his poem [in Just-]: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47247/in-just
Twitter: @Abigail Zajac
