Poetry
August 2021
Used to
I used to think that snowflakes were pieces of lost fur from the Moon
By Wil Turner
August 3, 2021
I used to wonder if snapping my fingers
could change my fingerprints
almost like melting snow and refreezing the crystals.
If every snap was like creating a brand
new snowflake on my hand,
then certain songs on the radio had to be like
road trip blizzards in the middle of June
I used to think that snowflakes were
pieces of lost fur from the Moon.
A place so close to the sun
it had to shed every January
I used to think that God was a Spider
and that clouds were his webs.
Woven in the sky and shifting in the wind
tight enough to catch angels
but soft enough to let the ghosts slip through
I used to wonder if the ghostbusters
could tell the difference between
guardian angels and haunted houses.
and if they could,
was it by checking the fingerprints?
Wilbert Turner III is a writer from Philadelphia who writes about the tremors that ripple from the margins of society all the way to the centers of power. A graduate of the New School's MFA you can find him on social media at @Wil_to_Win and his podcast Viewer Digression on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and all other platforms.
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