FACES TUMBLING DOWNWARD / *image by Amalie Flynn*

Each time I open my notebook the pages stick.
Because I’ve forgotten.

And onto the ground
they fall:
royal purple flowers fall
out,
emerald stemmed, blue veined,
life
from the coast of Italy.

You pulled them from the earth,
pinched their feet
with your fingertips,

you breathed into the sea

and thought of the way my hair
swayed between my shoulders,
while you once walked behind me
near an American riverside,
flowers sway in the field
the same way.

You placed the poppies then
into the spine of your bible
you pressed it,
punched the face
and rubbed the back
onto the ground
to release water
into sacred words
you pressed,
wanting me there
and you breathed into the sea.

Yesterday, you stood in the kitchen
of your new house
while the songbirds in the yard
called good morning,
you opened your bible
and pulled the flowers up
by the end of their stems
like tails,
their faces
tumbling downward

and I opened myself / my notebook
and tossed the flowers into
my spine / my book’s spine

and there
I closed it
and pressed it into the granite
underneath
to press
wanting to stay there with you
out.

You asked me:
when again do you leave?
Two weeks.

Now,
one-thousand miles away
the pages stick
each time I open my notebook

and onto the ground they fall,

and I remember how
you must have looked
collecting purple poppies
by the sea of Italy.

Our modern lives,
so set apart,
both
by miles
and unsteadiness.

Lauren Davis

Lauren M. Davis attended the University of Southern Maine to obtain her Masters of Fine Art in creative writing with a concentration in poetry and alternative pedagogy for literacy. Work from her poetry collections Sleeping Through the Earthquake and Women Bones have appeared in numerous literary journals and an anthology. She teaches and has taught creative writing, English writing, and philosophy at several universities. She has appeared as a genre editor for the Stonecoast Review, and works as a freelance writer for a variety of businesses and non-profits. She designed, wrote, and taught Poetry Through Literacy, a curriculum for illiterate adults, worked as an artist for Artlink’s CSA project, and was the writer in residence in Washington State’s Hypatia in the Woods in 2016. In 2017, she attended Naropa University's summer writing program through the Jack K. School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colorado and was the Keynote Speaker at the Poet Society of Indiana's annual conference in October 2017 . In addition to her work as a professor, she works for Spark Placemaking as a Placemaking Coordinator for Electric Works of Fort Wayne promoting arts, culture, outdoor activity, local food initiatives, and community.