The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: & watch how easily the jaw sings of god by Ashley Cline

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to tend the garden that is my throat, suddenly in bloom

inosculation is a natural phenomenon in which trunks, branches or roots of two trees grow together. it is biologically similar to grafting. it is most common for branches of two trees of the same species to grow together, though inosculation may be noted across related species.

we speak in hypotheticals, you & i: we run our fingers
along tulip seams. we convince our clumsy mouths to
sing to longing, to sing of something in fashionable
furs—we thank her for her feral ache.

& we call this storytelling, how you bite with river
teeth & swear in languages i’ve never known. we
call it everything, we call it nothing. because
what can you possibly call the future that

it hasn’t heard before? so we take to the forest. we
dress our skeletons for wintertime & war. because
both will come, eventually. but until then, we’ll
dance. after all, we know of nothing else worth

doing, & we’ll call this surviving: the way our bodies
twist & wiggle—the way we plant our fingers in the
dirt like naked sycamores, praying. the way you
tend the garden that is my throat, suddenly in

bloom. how gently i would turn the earth, you say.
how kindly i would love her sorrows. & we’ll call
that living. because we know of nothing else
worth doing. nothing else

at all.

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