Yes, I have been rich / It's just no one let me know

Yes, I have been rich / It's just no one let me know

I have not studied

Abroad in Oxford

But I have graduated

At home to the applause

Of my mom, my degree not yet got in the mail

My feet have not 

Skimmed the sand

Of the Sahara at dusk

But they have bruised

And healed on the gravel road

Back home, pacing back and forth 

I have not heard the rush

Of New York or Broadway

But I have heard my friends

Soliloquy to me

The ill-planned symphony

Of my sisters in the back

My radio not yet fixed

I have not felt

The winds of Alaska

But I have felt the breeze 

Play with the sun and the shadows

On my shoulders

I have not gambled on

The Strip in LA

But I have gambled on you

I have stripped for you 

And I have won more than I could've dreamed

I haven't run my feet

Across Persian rugs in Isfahan

But I have run my feet 

Over the thick rug

We thrifted and rolled

Out on our tiny porch

I feel a dent in my finger

Where I have been pressing too hard

Against my thumb as I write

I start to stare at the robin 

Who just landed so cordially

On the drain pipe

I lean back over my notebook

Conscious of how I will have bad posture

When I'm older (I already do)

I crane my neck still

And my hair falls in my eyes

My hands are dry and

How tired I am of looking 

At other peoples things

It gives me a headache

Instead I think I will stretch

My feet out and put them up

I think I will sit in the sun

And not think about my posture

I think instead I will count 

My pennies, my fortune

The sun glaring on my eyelashes

My glass empty beside me

My socked feet stretching

The birds commentating

My notebook filling up

It is always like this

I am tired of finding pretty ways to name them

They are too busy to listen in the first place

I think I will go breathe them in instead

Swallow them whole

Spread generously on my toast

Hang them in my window

And drink them in with my eyes

– olivia gwyn

Peeling boiled eggs

 

Peeling boiled eggs

Sometimes I am caught by surprise

While leaning on the kitchen sink

Peeling boiled eggs 

Thinking of your frame bent over the kitchen counter

The touch of your soft wrinkled skin in my hand

The snapping of the fresh green beans 

The sinking into your couch

The sitting on cement steps 

The beep of the microwave

The smell of daffodils in spring

You telling me how beautiful I look

Even when you couldn't see

Knowing you believed every word you said

Some days

I am still waiting to come home to you on a late summer night when the sky is turning hazy purple and the fireflies are coming out and the ground is wet beneath the grass 

Slipping running on the way home 

Circling the house

The air around us cooling and dimming

The lights inside warm and inhabited 

Waiting to take us in 

Dirty and bright eyed 

Hearts beating 

And so carelessly young 

                             — olivia gwyn

The pulp sticky on your fingers

 

The pulp sticky on your fingers

Sometimes your hope 

Is a yellow blanket

Flung haphazard on the couch

Sometimes it is 

The child tripping on the 

Way up the steps

Splitting his lip on the ledge

And looking back with a 

Shaky smile and teary eyes

Other times your hope

Is a room full of 

Voices talking over each other,

In the familiar way

That only breeds affection

It is the breaking 

Of the yolk running down

Over the sides

It is the beetle burning

In the flame on the log

Just trying to return home

It is the split orange

Perfectly portioned for me and you,

A feast prepared in anticipation,

The pulp sticky on your fingers

– olivia gwyn

A tumbling run

 

A tumbling run (or redemption)

It’s like the sun on the pavement after rain

It’s a good tumbling run down a big hill

It’s the chickadees making a dinner party of the crumbs that fell to the ground

It’s like laughing after a good cry

It’s the warm bread and butter with the jam you thought you'd ruined

It’s when He comes like the sun

After millennia of dark

Like relief

Like water in a parched land

Like laying your head on your moms shoulder

Like climbing into a freshly made bed knowing tomorrow will be perfect

It feels like You

                                        — olivia gwyn

Everything is butter yellow

 

Everything is butter yellow 

Everything is butter yellow 

In the evening light 

On the cusp of fall

Summer still writing love notes 

Across the earth 

In its best handwriting

The darkness taking the landscape,
Changing it with 
Each large, easy stride

I try to follow as fast as I can 
To take it all in, but it doesn't 
Wait for me

It never does
I am trying to learn
To walk slowly anyway

— olivia gwyn