AARON LELITO

Mud and Lotus

Reading passages in the back seat
in a parking lot
after dark.

There’s nowhere else we could possibly go.

Nowhere else for us
but we can’t leave each other yet.
And there’s nowhere for us to go
with everything so heavy,
eyes in diffuse light

piercing each other’s space
and shadows

burrowing in each other’s salt mines and we can’t leave yet,
holding on, eyes gazing
in vacated space.

Headlights go by and make us both nervous.

It’s our comfort to each other,
and we just want to be innocent.
And we know that no one else would be here for us tonight.

Maybe we’re connected so deeply
and maybe we’re just lonely,
holding onto each other’s pieces for a while,
onto the plucked leaves and not the mud
even though we read about what lotuses look like
when they bloom and what they need in order to grow.
I notice the glint of lamplight shaping her—
that we’re capable of changing our behaviors

that we’re capable, too, of merging
and of pulling apart.

Lights flash as a car passes
holding on
holding on
holding on

Aaron Lelito is a visual artist and writer from Buffalo, NY. His poetry chapbook, The Half Turn, was published in 2023, and he released a collaborative notebook/art collection titled If We: Connections Through Creative Process in 2024. His work has also appeared in Stonecoast Review, Barzakh Magazine, Novus Literary Arts Journal, SPECTRA Poets, Peach Mag, and Santa Fe Review. He is Editor in Chief of Wild Roof Journal. Instagram: @aaronlelito