I know I am the parasite – I pulled
those weeds. Tore out the shrubs
where the skunk used to sleep.
My hands in the earth where
my ancestral violence seeps, its
muddy mouth belching bitter heat.
This is my autumn apology.
I wake and regret the milkweed
I murdered before it could seed.

 

Suzanne Honda (she/her), author of chapbook “When We Were Birds” (Porkbelly Press, forthcoming 2022), is a poet and teaching artist based in Michigan, where she lives with her partner and their two cats. When she isn’t in the classroom, she can be found knuckle-deep in her garden, surrounded by an ever-growing pile of paperbacks, or in a dusty record shop. Suzanne is published in Bear River Review and SWWIM Every Day with work forthcoming in The Hyacinth Review and Soundings East.