still life with never leaving

Callan Latham

You lose the orange tree on the front step 
and lightning strikes you every autumn.  

It has come to be tradition,  
one that you lay  
under the porch and tuck under the slimy 
brown leaves, a body at the beach. The lilies  

on the countertop know what it means to give up. 
In the morning they cling to a dead scent, clicking 
like hard candy under the tongue.  

It would be easy  
to leave everything in the pit of my stomach. 
I spend my days reaching for a white wall  

that doesn’t even try to leave.  
Mourning of blue  
underfoot, pollen dustings on a petal. Your sky  

is a leftover of existence, a mentioning of breath 
that forgets to fill itself again.

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Callan Latham lives in Iowa City. When she’s not studying, she can be found talking long walks, watering her growing collection of houseplants, or writing. At the moment, she is working on a novel. Her poetry has been published in places such as Electric Moon Magazine, elementia, and Santa Clara Review.

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