Nimble / Thimble Touch

In full sun, or cold
tolerance, asters grown in, all

charmed and untoothed, wild—
their star-slit petals cross

each other, aster-

isks, ticks, tisks
of remembrance.

There is a game
blossoms play

with each other:

besides the speckled
throats, plants choose

to dress, protect them-
selves in fox-

glove sleeves, thimbles,
during a game of tag, or touch

-me-not—
a half-life lasts a day.

I stare at the aster,
at its last finger of

pulverized breath.
It sheathes, sneezes

like a collapsed core
of a black hole.

---

Clayre Benzadón is an MFA graduate student at the University of Miami, managing editor of Sinking City, and Broadsided Press’s Instagram editor. Her chapbook, Liminal Zenith, was published by SurVision Books. She was also awarded the 2019 Alfred Boas Poetry Prize for "Linguistic Rewilding" and published in places including SWWIM Every Day, 14poems, and Crêpe and Penn, as well as forthcoming in ANMLY and Fairy Tale Review. You can find more about her at clayrebenzadon.com.