Kissing under a maple leaf, amber as the ghost of sunlight in November. I want to press it between pages, memorize it by hand and midnight.

Barren trees claw at the sky line like hell’s sinners grasp at heaven. The world outside is dying, while something inside me wakes. I adorn myself like an altar

for the dead, fill my hollow heart with chrysanthemums and marigolds and frost bite. I’m dreaming of mornings that rain teeth, nights like mulled hauntings retold

by candlelight, with breathy intentions. I want you to carry me away from the market stall lights and gingerbread houses, rooms dreamspun

in champagne. Take me to the slant of moonlight beyond the pines, where cryptids lurk and midnight holds fast. I want to be a wooden spoon who remembers

every hand. I want a single word that means everything: hallow, kindness, hurt. I used to think weeds were flowers. I would like to believe it again.

Prompts used (tags are the poets’ IG handles):

@__vigilancee - “slant sunlight” @theconstantpoet - “I adorn my body like a Christmas tree” @imandq + @ml.mecham + @laur_enough - “a kindness left on the doorstep” @papertearspoetry - “dreamspun” @arcanapoetrypress - “the ghost of sunlight” - from edging by Claire Evans @thegrammarwench @octavia.poetry - “among the pines” @jessaure.poetry - “gingerbread house as a map of where it hurts” @kaytpoems - “seeing your breathy intentions” @tangledflxwers - “barren trees claw at the sky like sinners in hell claw at heaven” @amykaypoetry - “I’m dreaming of a … Christmas” @m.l.macdonald - “mulled whining” @lunaroseferguson - “market stall lights” @arica_writes + domarleypoet + @forgotten.dumplings + @imandq + @ml.mecham - “a wooden spoon that remembers every hand” @loisofthehearth - “the world outside is dying; something in you is waking” + “it rained teeth and candy wrappers” @lorrainefaepoetry - “cryptids lurking” @alexismromo - “I used to think weeds were flowers” + “fill my hollow heart with chrysanthemums and marigolds” @imandq + @ml.mecham + @theincidentalpoet - “midnight held on”