The Record Player

Again, the boutonniere spins; this time, it unwinds
to the fields where a girl picks hyacinth. She sucks in
its dampness. I imagine earth and root between 

her fingertips. The grooves on the record player
splay open: inside, an orchid petal and a carnation. 
The needle follows the girl, the girl follows the needle.

Unlike me, she is breathing freely and letting it all in.
It’s raining but the record player keeps singing—.
I’m completely still. But the boutonniere is unpinning itself:

anemones, peonies, and thyme fly off the turntable.  
I want to look away as if I’m watching someone 
undress. Stay, stay, the boutonniere enjoins. 

Unfastened from an unhappy chest, carnations spin 
around the girl who twirls into fuchsia-laden fields. 
The record player presses on—through the scratches, 

the missed beats, the flicker of the cue light. 
But who is this girl? Everyone will ask and I won’t know, 
only I’ll say she’s from a childhood song.

I’ll name her Joy. She carries lavender and tulips 
on a silver platter—a disc I want to hurl through the air. 
A pin in a lock, jimmy me open: me, this girl. 

Her breath is my breath—begonias, irises, and marigolds, 
are pinned to our chests. Yes, yes. We’re dancing, dancing, 
dancing—nowhere, everywhere—into, outside of time.

SHANNON K. WINSTON

Shannon K. Winston is the author of The Worry Dolls (Glass Lyre Press, forthcoming) and The Girl Who Talked to Paintings (Glass Lyre Press, 2021). Her individual poems have appeared in Bracken, Cider Press Review, the Los Angeles Review, RHINO Poetry, SWWIM Every Day, West Trestle Review, and elsewhere. Find her here: shannonkwinston.com