In our inverted umbrellas, we traveled through stormy waters without knowing the end of the journey. We placed love notes in bottles and let them float away from time to time. The sun was a red rooster; our hearts, rotating weathervanes.
We found solace in books on the bottom of the ocean. Dictionopolis, stacked high. Goldfish patrolled the streets, not granting any wishes.
There were paper boats made of dreams, or maybe of the love letters that no one read. The ink had long washed away, and the words were unreadable. The waves kept babbling Return to sender. Destination unknown.
Where do the love letters go when no one reads them? Why, in the love letter tree, of course, where they grow instead of leaves. In spring, they become sheet music. All the wildflowers, birds, and crickets know the notes.
Full of thorns, our hearts grew under glass cloches. They bloomed on summer solstice. A young woman harvested their petals that very night for preserves. From sugar and water, she made simple syrup and mixed in the petals with lemon juice. She mumbled and stirred with a wooden spoon. The heart petals crystallized, and the air filled with fragrance.
Meanwhile, the woods were full of music. The pianist played the dandelion sonata, and the milkweeds followed with their flutes. Crescendo! Crescendo! Queen Anne banged her lace tambourine. Fortissimo, the horn of the moon.
Claudia Serea is a Romanian-born poet who immigrated to the U.S. in 1995. Her poems and translations have appeared in New Letters, 5 a.m., Meridian, Word Riot, Apple Valley Review, and many others. A four-time Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, she is the author of Angels & Beasts (Phoenicia Publishing, Canada, 2012), The System (Cold Hub Press, New Zealand, 2012), and A Dirt Road Hangs from the Sky (8th House Publishing, Canada, 2013). More at cserea.tumblr.com/.
–Art by Milan Vopálenský & Esmahan Özkan
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