driving home from the orthodontist this morning,
I’m thinking about the way birds fly while peaches are ripe
& dew-damp & eager & you can’t help but let the juice explode
inside your mouth & have you ever seen a hummingbird
suckling its feeder? as if she’s trying to get out every last ounce
of sugar water as if she’s beating her wings so fast
they’re stopping time as if all she wants is the Sun
in her feathers for just one second longer,
& I guess what I’m trying to say is I don’t always know
what’s directly in front of me, like cars & window screens—
I’m saying walking home feels easier than walking away
& once an owl flew by my mom’s Toyota so fast
it looked like a thrown snowball, blur of white & dirt specks
because perfect snowballs don’t exist, not here anyway.
You’d know, wouldn’t you? Where they are, how many hands
made them, maybe I’ve got it all wrong & you are the snow,
you’re each flake & you’re landing & I hope you melt quickly.
I hope you never have to come back to this place,
because even though I’ve never been in a car accident, black ice is still
my greatest fear. Sliding, wheels turning, going nowhere.
After Matthew Olzmann
Dylan Fritz is a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania, potentially looking to study any combination of English, Creative Writing, Urban Studies, Political Science, and Criminology. Fritz is also an employee of the Kelly Writers House, an on-campus organization that supports students of all majors who are interested in writing, as well as those in the greater Philadelphia community. Prior to attending UPenn, Fritz graduated from the South Carolina Governor’s School for Arts and Humanities, a boarding school for the arts, where he specialized in creative writing. He also runs a lit-mag called Fish Barrel Review.
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