swifts  &  s l o w s · a quarterly of crisscrossings

i rearrange my words
Lydia Falls

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Between the Hour

when tales ache heart euphoric
and time is what you search for
bend your mindset
sculpted linear
to liquifying colors
until all your insides surface
and what feels like your eternity
is caught between the hour:

the moment nothing happens
but everything always
was.

For the Taking

i’ve grown estranged from
the things i love.

guarded in the silence
as it wraps around my body
like a starlit obsession,
i rearrange my words
until their virtue
overtakes me and i reckon
there is sadness built
in honest.

the truth is there for the taking
and i thaw inside its colors
and i wonder
if all this was for
you.

The Sleeping Hour

i wait at the peak
for our reaffirmed
condition.

we step from the warehouse
in tandem, trailing the waves
through vibrations alive
in our heads.

the Brooklyn Yard eclipses
past the sleeping hour,
when violet tints to azure
spills to red.

she returns in a state
of modest escalation.
her eyes whisk towards
each blessing to possess me
with intention— hold me there:

where cadence melts to rapture
through the turnstile of lights,

where mauve pools in the stratosphere
with density to tug me
into ether.

the ritual concludes as our herd
filters out; we integrate the soft
among the resurrected glow

to cleanse these city streets
between the buildings.

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Lydia Falls is a poet and teacher who currently resides in New York. She studied Human Development at Brown University and upon graduating, received a Fulbright fellowship to teach abroad in South Korea. She returned to New York to earn her master’s degree in Education at Columbia University, and went on to teach in Taiwan. Her formal studies and experience living abroad in Asia further developed her interest in exploring the human psyche through poetry, yoga, and self-reflection. Her poetry collection, Beneath the Heavy, was published under Merigold Independent (2021). Lydia’s poems have appeared in Connecticut River Review, The Festival Review, Indefinite Space, and more. Her work is online @lydiafalls_