Meditation on Dreams & Anxiety with the Six Components of Weather
Meditation on Dreams
When dreams grow on trees like oranges,
the grower plucks a dozen,
squeezes the juice into jars
with bare hands.
Fog settles in the orchard
thick as magic, until
the orb of fire
levitates above the tree line,
burning it all away.
When dreams grow in meadows
children pluck them &
weave them into wreaths
with daffodils, harebells
& baby’s breath, unaware
they’re already
dead. When a dream grows
in a womb, it either bursts
forth naked & bloody
& trembling, or it doesn’t.
So I wait—
arms & hands
in the receiving position.
Anxiety with the Six Components of Weather
Temperature of a room before & after you lead me into it. Before & after I stumble out of it—a waiting room, a hospital room, a closet with three mops & a broom.
Atmospheric pressure from within me, pushing against my hippocampus, my capillaries, my heart, pressurizing my veins until they gush purple-to-red at the smallest paper cut. You hand me a stack of papers, disheveled.
Wind blowing my hair into a swallow’s nest, whirling my worries into a web of sparking consciousness. Fears animated like crinkled leaves tossed in a gust, caught in a latticework of your lies.
Humidity, how it clings to my skin, pastes shorts to thighs & clouds spectacled eyes. How you can swim in it. How I swam in you, dove deep, drank you into my stomach, sucked you into my lungs.
Precipitation, like tears, like sweat, like blood dripping from Christ’s brow. You wanted me to forget anything, anyone who offers peace like a smooth stone in a palm, an olive branch in a beak, a rainbow with flood receding.
Cloudiness of vision, cloudiness of conscience, cloudiness of sky. What happens when, finally, the clouds part & my eyes dry? Upside-down dumpsters, torn-and-bent trampolines, half-gone houses—everything a mess, but who cares if inside me a small white rabbit rests.
Bethany Jarmul is an Appalachian writer and poet. She’s the author of two chapbooks, including a mini-memoir Take Me Home now available from Belle Point Press. Her debut poetry collection Lightning Is a Mother is forthcoming with ELJ Editions in 2025. Her work has been published in many magazines, including Rattle, Brevity, Salamander, and South Florida Poetry Journal. Her writing was selected for Best Spiritual Literature 2023 and Best Small Fictions 2024, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, The Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, and Wigleaf Top 50. Connect with her at bethanyjarmul.com or on social media: @BethanyJarmul.