The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: The Birth of Undoing by Emily Patterson

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After Quarantine, We Go Out into Marigold Light

in search of zinnias, faded to pink,
the last bouquet of emerald peppers.

Summer squash rotted and frozen,
pale skin crusted with ice. You say:

Let’s see what we see, leading me
on thin paths crowded by dried dill,

your wonder gracing everything––
especially the pumpkins that will

never grow, green as summer,
palm-sized and already dying.

Your cough is muffled by the open
world. I can smell the air again.

I try to exhale the fears that have
flourished alongside you since

before you touched the earth.
I say it like a prayer that won’t

sink in, like frost on the surface
of things: One breath, another.

These fruits don’t need to be harvested.

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