The Fruit Cellar Is Empty

by Selby Liebert

After Crisis Birds, Stella Snead (1950)

We are here, in a world becoming
desert, winter and summer,
and the green rise of spring already so distant, here
because our wings are clipped, a chorus singing
as the sea of wheat is stripped
to chaff, the branches of the forest bare,
so each note echoes.

Empty homes, not more than dried spit
and horsehair, brittle walled little hearts –
we are not forgotten,
only wrapped deeper, the seeds of an apple:
a little sweet, a little poison,
and still we are hungry,
in this slumbering tree
waking into hope, shedding the fruit of old sunsets.

Nature will preserve these fragile bones,
and the sky will bring a new day,
a reminder:
we do not come into this world
so full of limbs
to be alone.

Selby Liebert is a Great Plains transplant growing in the Pacific Northwest. When not writing she enjoys photography, cooking good food, and making music. Her work has appeared in Identity Theory, Gone Lawn, and elsewhere. Find her online at @sqliebert.bsky.social.