Free Verse
Tallow Her Heart. Honorable Mention in October Challenge. Top Story - October 2026.
Her heart is in autumn kept as tallow in a jar too stubborn to melt in her state, too stubborn to be here now where summer never ends and every leaf-worn wind sends her back again to all the reasons she hates seasons where nothing ever falls but her feelings— unhappy with the weather unwrapping her present for another, where sumac turns scarlet and pumpkins light the porch, where lovers get lost in tall grass and crows gather around the straw man. If those northern pastures are what she's after, those crows, like her, are free, and the next October wind, when she falls again, I can follow her there. I can follow her where tallow melts her heart, till dusk bells ring us home. Or she can go alone— there is no lid holding her in. Autumn isn't the love I'm missing— it's the present she's unwrapping. If she'd rather be there than here, where am I?
By Pixel Floydabout a month ago in Poets
