by Kathryn Petruccelli

Puckered for a kiss, your flowers' golden lips beg
all the way up the trail. Are you just about the show?

Sticky Monkey—stage name to beat.
Look at the audience you draw:

bush lupine, prickly pear, Indian paintbrush, scarlet pimpernel.
Poison oak draped around you like it owns you.

It never used to be like this, all bustle and flame. You were salve,
eased fever. The Coast Miwok, the Pomo, they knew

you relieved burning. Have we forgotten your roots?
These days, it feels like a matter of time—everyone at the party

knocking paper cups together, pointing manicured fingers at the view,
a petal away from combusting. Right now, in another place,

the blazes chase glossy black-cockatoos, water skinks, bristlebirds.
How deep is memory buried?

So beautiful—your scorched, little mouths.

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Kathryn Petruccelli is a bicoastal performer and writer with an M.A. in teaching English language learners. Her work has appeared in places like New Ohio Review, Rattle, River Teeth's Beautiful Things, Poet Lore, december, and SWWIM Every Day. Nominated for Best of the Net 2020, Kathryn is a past winner of San Francisco's Litquake essay contest and a finalist for the 2019 Omnidawn Broadside Poetry Prize. She teaches online writing workshops from western Massachusetts. More at poetroar.com.

by Kathryn Petruccelli

White as the mug that holds it.
A touch of milk, no honey, just
its own sweetness.

I tell my husband that the woman at the shop said
she doesn’t sell closed infusers
because they aren’t good for the leaves.

What did she say? They could break? Bruise?

A note that causes my husband to roll his eyes and huff.

But what if everyone—all 7.6 billion on the planet
loved enough
what they love
to overstretch its importance:

The hairdresser who peers into my scalp
discussing the growth rate of healthy follicles,
extolling his tirade on parabens as Satan’s operatives.
Or the dentist

that would slip Grinch-like into the sleeping houses
of her patients to steal away the sugared formula bottles
from their babies’ cribs if she could.

Later, at the imports store, I choose an infuser I hope
will please my husband but not horrify the tea woman

if she were to see it, though of course, she won’t.

At home, I place the leaves of the white coconut cream tea
into the infuser with some care, with more reverence
than I would have imagined possible only a short time ago.

This is all we can ask of ourselves:

to hold the world
a little more gently
each day
than we did the day before.

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Kathryn Petruccelli is a bicoastal performer and writer with an M.A. in teaching English language learners. Her work has appeared in New Ohio Review, Rattle, Literary Mama, Ruminate's blog, and elsewhere. She is a past winner of San Francisco's Litquake essay contest and her work earned honorable mention for the Joe Gouveia Outermost Poetry Contest judged by Marge Piercy. She is at work on a poetry series based on the history of the alphabet. See more at poetroar.com.