we are turning gold / we are dying | by Kailey Tedesco

what i’m saying
is a lie: you brought a guillotine

to my bedroom
& told me

a long story about a girl
murdered

by a cistern, inhuman. i asked
if it was the cistern

or the girl that
was not human & you

looked quiet.

this lie feeds
me spoonfuls of
latent images

each slowing a grove
of stumps,

bare headed & blank palmed.

i looked up
& through the
dead trees

i saw violet

light chipped like
toenails. what i’m saying
is still

a lie: the evidence
of absence does not

equate to the voice
i so desperately need
right now;

it only implies the existence
of a loneliness

so charred
it foils

golden.

Kailey Tedesco is the author of These Ghosts of Mine, Siamese (Dancing Girl Press) and the forthcoming collection, She Used to be on a Milk Carton (April Gloaming Publishing). She is the editor-in-chief of Rag Queen Periodical and a staff writer for Luna Luna Magazine. She also performs with the Poetry Brothel. You can find her work featured or forthcoming in Bellevue Literary Review, fields, Prelude, Faerie Magazine, and more. For more, please visit kaileytedesco.com or @kaileytedesco.