ROMANCE Poetry: WILDFLOWER BOY, by Jayla Hall Cabrera

Pick a part the pond
while you got me by hand
we was just babies.

Childish first love
you got me—by the pond
there is no exchange of kisses.

By hand you hand me
the beauties that grow
where we walk.

Tied into a string
around my wrist.
Something so simple

puts me over the moon.
Over there you say
death lays in a reptilian

an attempt to be manly.
I peck you at the cheek
while turning away from

where lifeless lies.
Unknowing the same
would become of us.

You’d draw the line
in rushing water—erasing,
and we grow a part.