The Indicator x The Student: “Misty Stone, Sweet Petrichor”

I thought I caught it last night — felt the verdant warmth against my palms

but in the morning, fresh petrichor misted stone earth

as fat blue raindrops wept on powdery soil

dry with yearning, quiet with tired

Surrender to memory and the way it fills you with dread:

the evergreen will die in roves,

your green forest will rot and dust, hinges will rust

with unuse — warmth will rupture and bleed, soft leaf will fall

and crust. Surrender

to time, and the moments it holds

yours for now in a forever way —

when some forevers away, the sepia dress

that holds your neckline and nips at your waist

lies in a dusty attic

moth-eaten and molten forgot

will it yearn for you in a forever-way

in the forever-dusty sunlight it lives in?

You, not the you who is awash in time but who

leaves it wholeheartedly on your doorstep?

You, who are a glutton for moments

and the incident angle of sunlight

streaming through bare branches?

and You know what happens in the end

because life is the history of a tree in winter

but in tonight’s moonlight,

you will be new and fresh anew. Yes.

Spend forevers chasing

tides, drawn back by languid moon

let them wash over your ankles

drink them in with your eyes

Spend forevers chasing tides,

hear them break against the rocks

let them remind you that there is memory here on earth

and only blue forgetting sustains an evergreen.