Phases

by Sean Foster

to become a vase

to hold all your wild

flowers

blue lupine, pepper and salt, columbine

in the spring.

were my skin blown

glass

i might contain your

iris, bunchflower, your lizard’s tail

in summer.

were I a vessel with water

in the fall,

I might clutch your gentian, your boneset, your turtlehead,

but never your aster,

your snakeroot

should never be cut.

to become a vase

and hold all your wild

flowers

I’d give up

my time with you

in winter.

BIO: Sean carries mail in Fairfield, Ohio. Mostly in light, but at times, in dark. In 2022, he wrote daily. In 2023, he published some of these works alongside his art on a small substack called typaphobe. Sean lives outside Cincinnati with his wife, daughter, their boxer, and sibling cats. x @foster_ious ig @fosterious