By Julia Ross

I cry every time I eat a dragonfly
but they taste like starlight and warm me
from inside out. I cut my butter with lemon,
my chocolate with wine. If my sustenance
is bound up with their annihilation
the least I can do is court a bitter tongue.

I have tried so many times to exile myself
but every dusk, the sky calls me back home
in a voice like the pulsing of a streetlamp
near burnout. I am an eater of stars.
They snow iridescent across my vision,
backlit by their recall of the sun. 

On the night the great bulb flickers out
I will lose my appetite for winged things.

~~~

Julia Ross (she/her) is a poet and public special education professional from Austin, TX. She is the author of the chapbook Sacred Beetle Contemplates the Funding Freeze (Ghost City Press, 2025). Her work appears in Beaver Magazine, Dog Throat Journal, 2River View, About Place Journal, Rise Up Review, The Marbled Sigh, and elsewhere.