One Honest Season

by Megan Morales

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​Night skies and waterfalls and towering oaks.
You let me watch you revel in them like gods.
You marveled and sung praise to a beauty inarticulate, 
And all I wanted to look at was you.
​
You said you liked flowers, 
so I painted myself red, and purple, and gold.
But when you kneeled down to admire them 
I was no longer in view.

Tear my flesh like bark in search of something more. 
Something I did not know I had. 
It’s hollow inside.

​Tear my flesh like bark in search of something more. 
Something I did not know I had. 
It’s hollow inside.

​Cold winters were truth.
Honest like fossils they killed the warmth of fat and fur, 
To strip down the pieces that protected only you.
November did not forgive.

​I cursed those mountains. 
Because while you were satisfied with what had ended,
I was on the other side hoping
You would climb over them for me.

​Your pretty words on paper in ink, 
dissolved in the water.
They did not hold together long enough
For me to believe them.


Megan Morales is a creative writer and a student at Sacramento State University.


​​​SHARE - Issue: 1.8 / April 2026