Victoria Jean Reynolds
Victoria Jean Reynolds was born in 1993 during the storm of the century in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at George Mason University. She is the Poetry Editor at phoebe. Her work has most recently appeared in Passengers Journal. She is never reachable in the group chat because she is always floating down the river in her canoe. You can find her on Instagram at toreyntial.
Lullaby
The sound of your breath, at first, signaled rest.
Your face back again at the edge of boyhood,
your lungs a chair, a rhythmic rocking.
After this many years, your breath is a train
pulling out from a station, one long exhale.
Your breath was that creaking machine’s
hallway, the ticket taker’s half-hearted confetti
littering the floor behind. Your breath was a garden,
a window frame the landlord haphazardly painted
shut, a boat slamming against the dock in the wind.
Your breath is the catch of a key in ignition.
A shuddering start. Your breath became a bookmark,
a dog-eared page in the argument of the night.
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Image by Kseniia Ilinykh from Unsplash
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