The farmer’s market is sunning tiny succulents
when I realize the clocks have skipped
ahead one hour. The season, growing out its hair.
We folded origami boats and left them
in puddles behind the physics building.
I said, This will never happen again.
Doppler thrum of cars (everything
sounds different when it leaves you),
the purr of fruit ripening in wooden crates,
the afternoon sloughing away in rust-
gold tatters. We stood with our ballet flats
dipped in silty water, our losses hurtling
toward us at the speed of gravity.
You shouted Bon voyage! and let
those paper hulls catch drift. I count backwards:
that was six years ago, the day with the boats.
Where I live now, I can see the farmer’s market
every weekend from my window, stalls
full of bright perishing. Down the street
the other way is the bus station.
When it closes, they leave the light on
over the lost and found.
Daylight Saving by Sheila Dong | Lemon Poetry Reed Diffuser
Short Bio: Sheila Dong is a writer and movement artist living in the Sonoran Desert. Their publications include the chapbooks Moon Crumbs (Bottlecap Press, 2019) and Swan as a Verb (dancing girl press, 2023), as well as the micro-chap The Clarissa Blueprints (Ghost City Press, 2023).
