Sophia Brandt (16)
The Graveyard Garden
This garden's glory long ago faded,
but we can still worship the
branches bearing a skeletal harvest.
Most end overgrown,
but this one's blessedly bare,
dying before my eyes.
I remember picking each miraculous
fruit, treasuring every bruise,
each excess droplet of sap on skin.
The boughs that used to cradle
my baby bones are frail, tombstones
crutch the premature crumbling,
I carved rest in peace at the ripe age of 8.
Ironic, but the garden was paradise.
We call it the graveyard
death to our childhoods, and it's hard,
remembering that you're forgetting,
that it's all fading away; and you can try
to seize charcoal tree bark as it disintegrates,
but we will still worship the last flower as we
pluck it from the earth.
Sophia Brandt is a sixteen-year-old writer from Southern California. She has previously been published in Flare Journal and Burn Magazine at Boston University. She loves to dance, cheerlead at her high school, and sing Taylor Swift songs.
The Graveyard Garden
This garden's glory long ago faded,
but we can still worship the
branches bearing a skeletal harvest.
Most end overgrown,
but this one's blessedly bare,
dying before my eyes.
I remember picking each miraculous
fruit, treasuring every bruise,
each excess droplet of sap on skin.
The boughs that used to cradle
my baby bones are frail, tombstones
crutch the premature crumbling,
I carved rest in peace at the ripe age of 8.
Ironic, but the garden was paradise.
We call it the graveyard
death to our childhoods, and it's hard,
remembering that you're forgetting,
that it's all fading away; and you can try
to seize charcoal tree bark as it disintegrates,
but we will still worship the last flower as we
pluck it from the earth.
Sophia Brandt is a sixteen-year-old writer from Southern California. She has previously been published in Flare Journal and Burn Magazine at Boston University. She loves to dance, cheerlead at her high school, and sing Taylor Swift songs.
