a horseshoe shovel

Something precious, pink shimmer of quartz in rough earth—
precious glimmerseed of memory. No lie, things have been rough.
Pink-cheeked fever, clustered stab of pain. But I’ve found here, in
shimmer and dirt, a slow sifting of time, a stalled second-hand, the quartz
of a Swiss watch stymied. When I close my eyes, I imagine a mound of
quartz where the garbage lies, where even trash cans shimmer
in the right light. How lucky to have known love, its gardens of pink,
rough caresses. Such delicate firmness. Both common and precious,
earth that blooms diamonds, stays fertile, alway growing something.

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Donna Vorreyer is the author of Unrivered (2025), To Everything There Is (2020), Every Love Story is an Apocalypse Story (2016) & A House of Many Windows (2013), all from Sundress Publications. She hosts the online reading series A Hundred Pitchers of Honey and co-edits of the online journal Asterales.