Lisa Miller
To the flower that I picked on the walk home
I don’t know what love is. I don’t know
if it’s something I cook up or order for takeout.
I don’t know if it’s branded or generic,
if I should look at the ingredient list and compare the two.
I don’t know if it’s the sunrise or sunset,
a can of Coke or a glass of orange juice on Christmas morning.
I don’t know how to hold it or when to hold it,
or if I should even hold it.
But you picked me up in the murky, cold Ireland air
on a bridge that my ancestors built
with arms and legs as strong as theirs—
against the clouds of an ancient country.
It felt like being naked in the woods—
all my mud-caked surfaces were wiped away
by the clouds collapsing with rain—it felt like something holy.
I’m afraid I soil everything that I love. See something that
makes my heart flutter, obsess over it until I’ve rubbed it raw.
Until I’ve completely shattered it, wrung it around
in my sick yellow hands and placed it back up on a thrift store shelf.
I don’t know what love is.
Ashley Anderson is an American poet, born in Akron, Ohio, living in County Wicklow, Ireland. She is earning her MFA in Poetry at Carlow University, Pittsburgh, where she assisted with the exhibition and archival project of the International Poetry Forum. She has been featured in Touchstone, Progenitor, The Bridge Lit Journal, yawp, and was selected as a semi-finalist for Lefty Blondie Press Editors' Choice Broadside Series, 2025. She is a member of Madwomen in the Attic. Her writing usually encompasses the relationship she has with her childhood as a tool for reflection.
