Redo – Poetry by Katy Santiff

This isn’t only seen, or heard, or said.
Don’t share that it’s unfolding, and never
tell me of its landscape, or its grand shape
and surfaces, raised like ridges on the moon.
It’s not darkness in the valleys, stooped
and gullied, silver-streaked or draped in gloom.
When loving swept into the room, it smelled
and felt like you, like buttercups I
had picked for mom, who said that they would
soon be dead because I pulled them from their
roots. Eagerness, and scents again, and when
she told me they were dying, disconnection
meant something to me. Then, you: god bless these
little loves, and other evolutions, that
blaze in their beginnings but damper soon,
when I—in all my doing—pull the bloom.

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About the Poet

Katy Santiff has written poetry in various forms all her life. A fan of meter and rhyme, she loves lines that hypnotize the reader with their sound. She believes in densely packed poems, preferring them to be mouthful when read aloud. A lifelong Marylander, she loves waterside living.

For the first time in nearly five years, Vita Brevis is closed for submission. Read the full story here.