by Ashley Steineger
Ran Off With the Star Bassoon

There the marigolds with my taken breath, there the bridge, there the stolen gun, there this spongey heart, this suit of skin, world-weary, foreign despite, there the sterile room, corridors like spaceship hallways, then back again, phoenixed, back against oak, there the slippery ecstasy of a psychic’s promise, there the treatment center disguised as healing farm, there the gorgeous meadows, rainstorm while drowning, there another friend takes flight, we watch them lift off, hang there like fog over water, burn up, become sunset, all day all year I long to be light, there the cabin in the woods deciding which parts should die, there goes the mind, there cries the mountain fox mercy mercy, there the neighbor smoking meth behind the sycamores, there mother, there holy cigarette, blue-curled smoke dissected by wind, new year in the other hand, there promise, there every perfect second, there like a thunderstorm came love, there love roughly, love rubbing my back there there, now here because where else, here with open book of secrets, here for good, here with you.

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Ashley Steineger is a holistic psychologist and poetry therapist whose work has appeared in Rust & Moth, The Night Heron Barks, Palette Poetry, and Ran Off with the Star Bassoon, among others. She is the author of the Poetry Therapy Workbook and currently resides in Raleigh, NC with her cat. She enjoys forest bathing, collecting tattoos, and untranslatable words.