Green Love Maribeth Van Hecke
Cleveland, OH, USA
@mbeinghungry
This poem is part of a collection of short poems inspired by Van Hecke's time living in the mountains and near the Great Lakes. As a writer, choreographer and performing artist, Van Hecke is interested in trans-disciplinary work. Her work has been featured in the Scarlet Leaf Review, and has been used by Strike Time Dance Company and other collaborative performances. She publishes her creative nonfiction on her blog maribeth.vanhecke@wordpress.com and have been a writer for the online magazine, The Odyssey. She received a Bachelors of Arts from Hope College, where she studied writing, dance and French.
ISSUE 1
Do you remember the mountains and how we clung to the rock like the lichen that turns its nutrients green? We held the mountains like bodies, pulling our own green love from its leaves. We hung onto the cliffs that spilled over the lush landscape, over the free-range bodies running over the horizon and into the sun-drunk afternoon.
I remember how we laughed out loud under the world of stars that told stories in the midnight sky. We clung to the darkness like stars about to fall. We held ourselves to the constellations like a promise, pulling ourselves into the deepest parts of the dark, dark blue.
But at the break of new day our bodies began slipping down the cliffs we had claimed as home. Our landscape changed, and with new sun our grip loosened and we fell like loose bones.
Do you remember, we were the mountains, and we mistook our own bodies at the rock we should cling to? Do you remember we were the bodies in the night sky, and the rock face at dawn when we fell to the earth, still trying to suck the green life from each other like the lichen that turns its nutrients green?