Mae Ellen-Marie Wissert
Image by Felix Mittermeier from Pixabay
Mae Ellen-Marie Wissert is an undergraduate majoring in English- Creative Writing and minoring in Gender and Sexuality studies at Idaho State University in Pocatello, Idaho. Her work has recently been published in Black Rock & Sage.
Universe be like
White flowers love the moon so much they glow underneath it. In May, after the last frost, I planted
a moon garden of gardenias & black-eyed susans & morning glories & watched them be illuminated
throughout the fever summer. In June, I sat on the hood of a man-I-met-on-Tinder’s Mustang in a parking
lot of a discount store at twenty minutes to midnight looking up & West. Lustrous
streetlamps towering above me. Rough unfamiliar hands on tender thighs crossed. A convenient store ice
cream cone to my lips, waiting on the train
of Starlink satellites to pass by, but the website tracking them was wrong. They were over Russia by then.
Then I saw them on accident in July on a Friday night when I got back together
with a boyfriend. Their trail shining behind him like seeing recurring numbers in sets of three on grocery
store receipts & all the clocks I own. Like pulling The Empress tarot card. Her gown of open,
full pomegranates, her crown of stars atop her golden hair, the sanguine cushions she rests on. Her
shielded heart & her fertility surrounded in fields of ripe wheat. Venus,
I can see your ruby glow in my backyard while he holds my unsteady hands. He says he loves me again.
It’s going to be better this time, I think. We’re going to make a baby,
baby he says. French flax linen sheets need three washes & lots of makeup sex before they feel more
like butter than burlap. Europeans hang their duvets off of balconies in full sunshine
because things live in there. Unbelievable things. We hang ours on the line like a flag for the neighbors
to see mascara smeared & fluids that came from us but when we bring it inside, it’s full
of paper wasps like a drafty log cabin in August. Their cruel venom enters & our skin crimsons & burns
& itches & swells. I bawl from mother nature’s betrayal. In September’s shrinking
light, amidst videos & books of what we should be expecting, Ram Dass says Be here now. I write that
on pieces of masking tape & stick them on doorways, mirrors, windowsills. We paint a bright
jack-o-lantern on the small slope of my belly in October & hand out candy. Princesses, cats, ninjas,
rabbits, dinosaurs, fairies, pirates, astronauts, vampires & witches reach out
to touch it, & I let them like I’m a goddess of good luck. The white blooms froze weeks ago, their dried
stems reminders of the radiance they once were. In November, after the first snow, I see Pisces
in the sky & I steal copper hoops from a department store. In December I yell at the dogs for doing dog
things & start fights over dumb stuff that doesn’t matter like which way is up
for silverware in the drying rack or if this or that shade of yellow towel will match the rug in the
bathroom. No one should call me mom, I say then.
The side of the Earth where I live has turned away from the sun. We hunker down for a long harsh
winter & then I realize, Venus, I was looking at Mars all along.
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