Callista Pitman

love poem to fall friendships

between us, the roots unfold like opening palms and there is something brutal
in the fine web of these shadows, the moon setting in a method so mechanical
I almost don’t believe it. when you say I love you. it’s hard to recall tenderness sometimes

( the clean accidental snap of a beetle’s wing under my shoe / the roundness of my
shoulders, sharp with intricacies / even this, even my hands strung together in a net in my
lap / fingers slotting / or the way I split a pomegranate, a quick crack of skin / the way I pull
my shirt over my head so swiftly even with shaking hands )

and the maple helicopters keep falling into my hood. there is nothing so soft as a life, unbroken
when we are so good at killing each other. you sweep the fallen seeds from my collar
and there is nothing mechanical in keeping each other alive, but we’re alright at it anyways,
and I place my hand on your elbow, gently, the way something living
touches something living.

Callista Pitman spends most of her time walking through the suburbs, lying on forest floors, and crying to podcasts. She is head editor at Ripple Lit, and her debut chapbook Starmilk Teeth was released 2022 with ZED Press. Her work has also been featured in several anthologies and contests by Vocamus Press, and the Eden Mills Writers Festival teen poetry competition 2022. Callista Pitman grew up in Guelph, Ontario, and currently studies at McGill University.