Self-Esteem

We held hands beneath the dirt
We wanted to be trees
Disintegration was all we could ask for
We embraced in the ditch
Our eyelashes caked in dirt
We were a burial 
We were roots
We created our own boundary
Every moment of it entangled
The blood we carried

Leaves a cadence
Veins your laughter catching the light
When sorrow wept who wiped its stars
Sidereal sidewalk imaginary
We engrave ourselves in cement when we feel lost
We cackle and stutter the cracks in the asphalt landscape
My home my playground my rubble
Who will tell the leaves they make lovely gravel

Melissa Eleftherion is the author of field guide to autobiography (The Operating System, 2018), & ten chapbooks, including trauma suture (above/ground press, 2020), & sunflower spell (poems-for-all, 2022). Her work has been widely published in various journals including The Berkeley Poetry Review, La Vague, & On the Seawall, and nominated several times for the Pushcart Prize & Best of the Net. Born & raised in Brooklyn, she now lives in Northern California where she manages the Ukiah Branch Library, curates the LOBA Reading Series, and serves as the Poet Laureate of Ukiah. Recent work is available at www.apoetlibrarian.wordpress.com.