She is from the Pacific Northwest and is accustomed to cloudy, gray birthdays – a lovely scene at times made lovelier by the blooming of the local cherry blossoms.
This year she’s a bit bummed because they have yet to blossom – so I’m bringing them to her.
I am dedicating this post to her and posting a poem I wrote for her back in 2011 which features the aforementioned tardy blossoms.
With these words, may there always be flowers somewhere near you, my dear.
José Angel Araguz is a CantoMundo fellow and the author of seven chapbooks as well as the collections Everything We Think We Hear, Small Fires, Until We Are Level Again, and, most recently, An Empty Pot’s Darkness. His poems, creative nonfiction, and reviews have appeared in Crab Creek Review, Prairie Schooner, New South, Poetry International, and The Bind. Born and raised in Corpus Christi, Texas, he runs the poetry blog The Friday Influence and composes erasure poems on the Instagram account @poetryamano. He is also a faculty member in Pine Manor College’s Solstice Low-Residency MFA program. With an MFA from New York University and a PhD from the University of Cincinnati, José is an Assistant Professor of English at Suffolk University in Boston where he also serves as Editor-in-Chief of Salamander Magazine.
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You. Are. The. Sweetest.
Thank you for the flowers, my bear.
P.S. BIRTHDAY!!!