DEPENDENCY

California was sweltering;
its melted sun dripped
pink onto the blue-gray
Sierra Nevadas—burned
gold onto the arid desert.

When I trailed Yosemite
I decided I was going to climb
El Capitan straight up
to the sky someday
just to prove I could.

The lake the sand
and the mountains
wrapped their majesty
around me, the air
fresh and clear as holy water.

East coast heat
sticks heavy;
the sun at dusk lingers
a pale natural light
when I return home.

Everything is left
untouched—
nothing settles in humid air,
in the familiar
dim emptiness.

What a disgusting comfort:
this stillness, this dark,
the pain-
killers left tucked
in their bottle.

The pill,
a blue mountain,
melts into my pink palm.

REDEMPTION

I wanted to catch
the last ray of sunset—
that golden beacon
dancing upon the red
& white petals just beyond
the edge of the barren wood.

I wanted to escape
what I mistook
for love, to forget;
I staggered
like a shot swan—
kissed neck, cracked heart

to beg the gentle petals:
cradle me in mercy.

LETTING GO

I've been bleeding out of my back,
letting a needle boil me red.
I crave a sting, careful not to
spill drops of myself but enough
to test the deepest nerve.
It curdles in the veins: the heat,
the restlessness, the stagnation
from having held it in so long
that words then become breathy lulls
and the body is really just
asleep, walking with blood that yearns
to let. So I let it—slowly.
Because if I give up too much
too fast it'd feel like I'm running
on empty: body broke, soul dry;
and I can't imagine how long
the downtime would hold me under.
For now, it works: letting go like this.

HOPE

Since I was a child, I have wished upon
a dandelion seed. Honeysuckle nectar

is too rich and I never seem to sleep
with the lights switched off. Every summer is

the same summer and I rarely see butterflies
only the mosquito bites I notice too late

when my leg swells welts. Restless one
night, a lover bit: There is nothing wrong.

Another yells out the same as it rains
and I slip up a stair step, letting it

echo and fester a bruise all before
I get back up. I should have fallen more

quietly but it wouldn’t stop raining.
I wish for morning sun, for butterflies on dandelions.

AFFLICTION

There's an empty chartreuse meadow
covered in spring grass that shines
like it never drank dry earth,
undead and still.
And there, under the lone oak tree,
a frail man of dead white bones stands
grim among the breathing as if
he has waited in the shadows
all along to prove that there isn't
solitude, no tranquility,
even in the gliding cosmos—
even in dreamscape, does hurt ever leave?

Rachel Hinch is a writer from Baltimore, MD. As a graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology, she has attended the New York State Summer Writer's Institute as a poetry scholarship recipient, as well as the Kenyon Review Writer’s Workshop. Her poems explore healing and its stages of emotion after trauma.