A Prayer for Earth

Jordan Davidson, United States

There is a place among the white wisteria,
Where we can rest our heads, and for a moment the world will enrapture us with its stillness.
In this place there will be no creatures, no birds, no winds tearing us apart with burning fingers.
In its place there will be groves of flowers spiraling around our heads,
Untouched by man, known only by you and I.
We will lay in the grass together,
Our hands intertwined, the ground a green bed beneath our tired spines.
You will look up at the sun that slips through the knots of willow and flower,
And it will fill your eyes with spring,
You will tell me: How did we never come here before?
I’ll squeeze your hand tighter so that for a moment we lay in silence,
Nothing between us but inches and air, and those inches and that air doesn’t fight battles for us—
Instead it lets us breathe.
One inhale, then another, your chest rises and falls,
The light spreads across you and caressing the grains of your hair.
The dust will shimmer, suspended.
The world will stop for you.
And there will only be us, hand in hand, and we’ll roll together,
So that my eyelashes kiss the fine grains of your scalp,
My fingerprints against the yellow pollen freckles on your nose.
We inhale together—
The world continues.
Because in that moment, among the white wisteria, we are the world.

When we unravel,
The salt of asphalt and car exhaust choking our lungs,
The trenches melting beneath us,
The smell of blood on our collars and our broken ribs and shoulders aching,
Out teeth grinding on empty stumps,
Unsure whether in this cave we will see the sun again,

I promise: I know a place with white wisteria.

I’ll take you there.

Jordan Davidson is a student in Denver, Colorado. She will attend Yale University in the fall, and is incredibly excited for the onslaught of rain coming her way. Her prose work is upcoming in Corvid Queen and Ice Lolly Review. Her poetry has appeared in Cathartic Youth Literary Magazine and her prose in the YoungArts Winners Anthology.

*This work is part of the Fated Universe, a Young Adult Fantasy Universe developed by Claire Malik and Jordan Davidson.