Arts
Pansies and Margureites to You!
Looking Ahead: Green Mountain Film Festival
Vase and Thunder
Vase and Thunder
by Amanda Irwin
Empty, yearning to be filled
with flowers, with sentiment,
with something a little more serious,
more valuable than stale air and dry dust.
The breeze blows over the rim
like a whistle in a canyon, Grand Canyon.
The high pitch accentuates the need
for stems, twigs, dirty water.
There is nothing of weight
to add strength and sturdiness to the base,
and with thunder, it tumbles over,
cracking superficially.
It slowly breaks down,
and little by little it falls apart,
chipping off and losing pieces.
The pieces of my body
lie in chunks on the table,
and the dust of my soul
drifts wantonly,
away from me.
Because of the thunder
I have lost every part of me,
and I will soon be swept away,
into a cupped hand,
into a bin of crumpled paper,
moldy leftovers, sharp can corners.
The air that once filled me
will be inhaled into another’s lungs,
and I will no longer exist.
You are the thunder of my destruction.
You startle and rattle,
too loud to be heard,
too quiet to be understood.
If I had listened closer,
maybe I would have noticed
the simple anger,
the nameless pleasure you took
in the distortion of my surface.
I should have seen it coming,
should have noticed the way
you ran your lightning bolt fingers
over my smooth ceramic façade,
allowing my dust to coat
the ridges of your fingerprints,
cake between the lines.
If I had read between the lines
of your rumblings,
I would have realized
your ability to crack me,
to shatter me
by hardly raising your voice,
let alone your hand.
A twenty-year-old student at Keene State College, Amanda Irwin lives in Lebanon, New Hampshire. She studies English and Women’s Studies and dabbles in more specific areas of gender and sexual studies as she explores her omnisexuality more fully.