Two Poems by Adeene Denton

Bluebonnets

I always wanted a beautiful death. The kind that lingers, the way a cup of tea goes cold, like smoke on a clear day, silt suspended in clear water.

I want bluebonnets to grow along the edges of my jawbone.
I want rabbits to build a nest in my rib cage.
I want everything I was to become the beams that build a future somebody needs
I want to be more than all the things I failed to do.

I hope you see me in the way light scatters in the morning mist, and not in the emptiness beneath my collarbone. I wish I could give you all the wonderful things I saw, pour the joy and awe into a chalice and keep the pain close, like dirt in the linings of my teeth, shadows between the discs of my spine.

Instead I’ll lose it all, all this pain I’m holding, without a place for it to go, and the love too. We can know from the smallest finger bone that a person lived. If you find mine I hope they’re useful to you.

You’ll never know how I loved the wind before a storm, fresh raspberries, my brother’s laugh, but you can turn my hip bone into the handle of a knife, and when you saw through crusty bread, or the tough rind of an old cheese, I’ll be reaching through the walls of time to love you too. I always wanted a beautiful death, but I hope I get bluebonnets.

Ceramic Conodonts

My mother gives me a strong jaw, dainty wrists, and a constant, lingering fear. The world is a mouth full of teeth, she says, and you don’t have it in you to bite back. Too much like your father. He’s lucky he’s tall. People forget he’s soft. You, being small, need to sharpen your soul. Everyone is slipping in something. Better their blood than yours. I never tell her she’s wrong about this, because she’s almost half-right.

Sometimes living is digging in hard enough to hurt. Carving a path through time like a scar, but I cannot sustain it. I have the jaw for it but not the will. The weakness always seeps through.

Giving kindness to the world is like bringing an heirloom to an anvil. When there is only one outcome. The result cannot be unfair and yet here I am, molding my heart into a new shape to see if this one survives the hammer.

Adeene Denton is a poet, dancer, and planetary scientist currently living in Boulder, Colorado. They have yet to quit their day job as a planets expert. You can find them posting on Bluesky @spacewhalerider.com or touching rocks on instagram @adeened.