HEAVEN’S HARVEST

do you remember when we tried
to grow snow peas for AP Biology back in high school?

they died quick
all because I forgot to water them
after class some Friday afternoon
they suffered a weekend without a sip
layed down brown and crisp by Monday morning
like you, they died

I don’t know if I believe in heaven but
I like to think you’re filling ceramic pots on window sills
with their seeds and handfuls of miracle-gro soil
your house blooms purple every May
you harvest hundreds of sweet pods every June

serve snow pea, feta, and mint salads with lunch and dinner
you pass the bowl across the table
made from the oak that fell
on our football field last hurricane season
to Kyle, Tommy, and Morris
who were also in our class

though you weren’t all friends before
everyone else you love still walks on earth
no one chooses friends there
you just are

I don’t know if I believe in heaven, but if I do
you’re in a house that sprouts all the plants we ever killed
every succulent overwatered
every spider plant left to dry
the violets and orchids
grow and flower like weeds
from the cracks in between floorboards
where everything is so green
and alive

THIS POEM IS ABOUT DIVA CUPS, BUT NOT REALLY

they say periods are shifted by the moon
we are shifted by the moon
how waves push and pull and shed
tides of red
honestly, I feel a little guilty
how could you compare this body to an ocean?
when I wrapped my plastic pad
in layers and layers of dead trees
and tossed it into the trash

once, we walked at this beach on Staten Island
and screeched
with terror: when we saw more fragments of tampons
than beings who actually lived there
washed up on the beach
must be why it reeked
of rotting fish

see, I am a visitor
don’t belong here
but there are pieces of myself that won’t leave
plastic applicators, floating
maybe we screamed because we were still brainwashed to believe
that periods were something disgusting
not because the constructed comfort is destroying
everything and

it never crossed my mind until I cracked an arm of a snow crab
on Christmas Eve
what could I be eating?
that maybe my body could be the ocean
the waves, and the salted breeze
if I ate what was inside it
like I am the thousands of tampons
still circling the world and Staten Island

that maybe a period wasn’t the problem
it’s what we created
to hide the blood.

Audrey Fatone (she/her) is a graduating senior of SUNY-ESF and founder of the school’s Poetry Society.  She is excited to start her career this summer as an alpine plant researcher in the Adirondacks. Her work has also appeared in The Voices Project and The Rainbow Poems.