Fountains—found-tains—found,
fond,
An ain is what? Plain, pain,
air lodged in your nose. Breath
like sun-bleached spring, winter hangs on
until summer at last emerges
clinging to a tail of snow.
Poor spring is left
no chair to rest on,
overlooked
& no choice but to lie down
and watch the clouds.
We watch.
We mark time chiseled across
our wrists, numbers wrought
in scars and freckles and wisps
of hair that never matched the rest.
We watch a time
invented.
Dandelions know when to
start, stop,
linger in a bed of green.
Sheep amble with the sun
their hooves carving contrail furrows
in the seams of the sky.
Rain falls,
lanolin running
to slick the sea.
Marisca Pichette is a queer author based in Western Massachusetts, on Pocumtuck and Abenaki land. Her work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Fireside Magazine, Room Magazine, Flash Fiction Online, Fantasy Magazine, Necessary Fiction, and Plenitude Magazine, among others. Her debut poetry collection, Rivers in Your Skin, Sirens in Your Hair, is out now from Android Press. Find her on Twitter as @MariscaPichette and Instagram as @marisca_write.