daily reflections

By Jonah Yoon 

in the new year: 

mama bakes banana bread, 

the whole house buttery with the smell

of cinnamon and molasses. 

the christmas tree is still up in the 

living room, and 

we don’t bother to watch the news anymore. 

things we want: 

a yellow house, 

red bird feeder nailed crooked to the fence.

peanut brittle sticking our jaws 

shut, 

someone for us to spit cherry pits 

into their palm. 

today: 

this morning, the static bullets 

hover mid-air, 

snapping like low whipcracks on 

the shoulders of a woman who, 

in the commotion, 

could be anyone’s mother. 

a dog barks from down the street, 

and you burn yourself on the stovetop.

i go to turn off the TV. 

things we have: 

old oranges on the counter 

in fishnet wrapping, 

the bottom skin tender and yielding. 

soldiers in the streets of a bombed neighborhood,

trees still smoldering. 

children dragging parents 

through rubble and dirt to lay down beside them,

cheek-to-cheek. 

two bottles of advil, 

love songs on the radio. 

tomorrow: 

i subscribe to the morning paper. 

you bake a blackberry cobbler, and i learn

that the bushes we have outside are invasive.

three species of rainforests frogs 

have just gone extinct, 

and we make love in the afternoon - 

light spilling through the curtains, 

trickling into the mouths of those

who are astonished to still be here.

we stay where we are.