Pawn Shop by MacKenzie Lee

The sky looks better with you in it. 

Gone are the days when the clouds meant

shade, or the confectioner pink sky is anything

other than the taunting blush of your cheek. To 

ignore gravity and plunge, just once, into the pure

light of the sun, to spend an afternoon with you.

Tipsy on a plagiarized fantasy, I whisper I miss 

you in my palm, touch your ear then giggle

 as we pollute the moon. I cash in my eyelash 

wishes and all those nickels tossed into fountains. 

Do you get a re-do on the ones that don’t come true stupid.

My lungs are filled with the winds of your laughter,

necessity alone forces me to empty. The sound of

a broken heart beats like crunching glass in your 

gums. Keep chewing because what if you forget

the delightful suffering of a memory that won’t come 

true. The sky sparkles brighter now you have been 

appointed director. Each star a monologue in harmony

with the whispers of stories, I wish I could tell you. Like

when I climbed the broken ladder and dipped my toe 

into our bright horizon and it left a stain. The sky looks better

with you there and how dare you make it so. Don’t 

you know you stole the hue from each evergreen tree 

just to splatter it out of reach? You’re a thief, yes

a bandit, but I gave you the key to a house full of 

precious things that you chose not to need.

MacKenzie Lee is a senior theatre and performance major, and creative writing minor. MacKenzie is originally from Atlanta, Georgia, where she was casually introduced to poetry in school. However, her real interest was born in Dr. Gary Mcdowels Advanced Poetry class where conversations with peers and the professor about the craft of poetry inspired many of the works MacKenzie has created.