Saving This for Later

Saving This for Later

Audrey Elledge

Here you collect moments like blue bugs
in jars on the windowsill of a child,
a glass museum of translucent wings
ordered in rows, shining in pane-light.

Here you tuck moments in your mouth like
hard candy, drops of lemon you amass
for times when your tongue must regard and swallow
something sweet that is all yours, only yours.

Here you store up to feast later, knowing
that when tomorrow you lie under the fingernail
of pale moon, you will remember
how it tasted to sip your life.

Like juice rolling down chin, then wrist,
so will life stream sticky on you,
if bitten.

To pay attention in this world—
to pocket clots of clouds,
to pull taut your gaze toward eyes,
to choose water, to choose skin,
to consider lilies—
is to take what is given.

To save these moments is not to hoard stale manna,
but to stoke your appetite,
to behold the one who keeps filling.

To tilt your head fully back,
to swig deeply of the afterglow,
is to say thanks.

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Audrey Elledge
Author & Editor

Audrey is an writer and editor in New York, where she works by day at SparkNotes. She has won the Academy of American Poets Prize and the Virginia Beall Ball Prize. Audrey co-authored two books, Liturgies for Hope and Liturgies for Wholeness (WaterBrook), with Elizabeth Moore.

Photography by Evie Fjord