The Unbearable Lightness of Seed Pods - Mikki Aronoff

A drizzle of pale green. Paper-thin globes

float to ground – so light the branches don’t lift

from their absence. I wait, then pick one up,

feel the lack of heft my eyes already measured.

So many have departed this tree. More to tumble

when weather wreaks its windy tricks and twists.

They say a soul weighs 21 grams. This hot summer

day, more untether from the world. A half million

now adrift — impossible to consider. We flounder

for remedy, work fast, wave our wands. Beetles

the color of checkerboards stream, wait piggy-

back for the bounty to dry, to spill its hard seed.

Previously published by Global Poemic, December 8, 2020

Mikki Aronoff’s work appears in New World Writing, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Flash Boulevard, Bending Genres, Milk Candy Review, Gone Lawn, 100 word story, Atlas and Alice, trampset, The Offing, Midway Journal, and elsewhere. She’s received Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, Best American Short Stories, and Best Microfiction nominations.