Spring held its breath until the cherries bloomed pink,
crowning your quiet street with perfumed pink.
At first just a few hundred blossoms opened,
but in two weeks the trees were all costumed pink.
Every day crowds came to see the cherry trees.
They touched and crushed and consumed pink.
Girls came in sundresses bursting with summer;
brides posed in front of the doomed pink.
As the blossoms died in a steady, silent rain,
we dreamed in waves that spumed pink.
You cried in my arms over what you had lost.
I spoke of coming cherries, enwombed, pink.
Cherie, the fruits now sweet on your tongue
are bloody with the past, wound-pink.
_______________
Síofra McSherry is a Northern Irish writer with an English degree from Oxford and a PhD in
American Studies. Her debut poetry pamphlet Requiem was the PBS Spring Pamphlet Choice for 2020. Her second pamphlet Ghost Methods is forthcoming from Broken Sleep in 2023.