Katie Ashworth Chamblee

Katie Ashworth Chamblee is a first year at Yale Law School. She grew up in North Carolina and studied poetry at Swarthmore College.

Memory

That spring I was coated in a film of magnolias.

I walked down streets cobbled with pennies

we'd thrown as children,

each filmed with wishes.

I could barely see you behind the smell of magnolias.

You were treading the air,

a coin through the water.

You were possible against the air,

   cool coins against my eyes.

Into pillows of air I said

Take this. Take this.

You tied my love around your wrist

like a balloon,

Take this, into pillows of air,

lungs ballooning against them,

I offered it to you, as though I had made

my own beautiful, functioning bloom.

it floated, a balloon

a loose period behind you,

you'd duck under

without pausing,

as the sky,

without pausing

reaches, reaches,

with absolutely nothing in its hands.