Iris Lennox

Tag: Stillness

  • Reading Past the Light

    I have to hold the book closer.

    Not because I need stronger reading glasses,
    though that may also be true.

    Just small adjustments,
    little by little,
    the words end up on my nose.

    Hello, words.

    I tilt the page toward the window,
    hoping there’s something to borrow.

    There isn’t.

    I keep reading anyway.

    It feels like I’ve stayed somewhere
    slightly longer than I was meant to,
    like a guest who hasn’t noticed
    everyone else has gone home.

    I look up.

    The room has already changed its mind—
    about me?
    About itself?
    The corners are gone.
    The floor is still there, I think.

    I don’t remember the light leaving.
    I only notice that it has.

    The book is still open in my hands.
    East of Eden, halfway through a sentence,
    continuing on without me,
    like a train speeding silently,
    and I am still on the platform.

    I could turn on the lamp.

    Way over there.

    I try to read one more sentence,
    but I think I’ve lost the plot.
    Who is “dknfihd,” anyway?

    —Iris Lennox

  • Namesake

    This one did not arrive gently.

    The edges remember something—
    a pressure,
    a folding back,
    as if each petal had to argue
    for its place in the light.

    Nothing about it is smooth.

    The ruffles hold.
    The color deepens where it was once hidden.
    Even the softness has weight to it.

    You could say it opened.

    But that would miss
    what it endured to become open.

    There are days
    the sky lowers itself without warning,
    and everything living is asked
    to stay.

    No explanation is offered.
    No promise of outcome.
    Just weather.

    Still, something in the root
    keeps drawing what it can.

    Still, something in the stem
    lifts what it has been given.

    And when it is finally visible—
    the pale, steady unfolding—
    no one sees the storms.

    Only the shape they left behind.

    Only the quiet fact
    that it did not close again.

    Only the way it stands
    as if the breaking of it
    was never the end.

    —Iris Lennox