Sometimes people try to write their stories

on sundried tomatoes because they become confused

in their passion for seeking red linen paper

in a garden that’s lonesome for poetry

and lust. This is what we’ve buried

beneath the zucchini: The art of losing isn't hard to master

written on the back of a picture

of Elizabeth Bishop. The swiss chard shows off

like a schoolgirl snuck out to a party

in her big sister’s lipstick, but the thyme

is humble the way women artists

sneak out to their gardens

in order to be able to wipe their lipstick off.

Time is a mirror of the way things grow--

inward, outward, loveward, skyward.

When we say the world is falling apart,

what we mean is, you can find us

between the rose thorns and the thumb pricks

painting landscapes of a future

we’re not sure exists.

Melissa Studdard's and Kelli Russell Agodon's collaborative poems have been published in Seattle Review of Books, Berfrois, Inspiration in Isolation, and Stanford University’s Life in Quarantine. As well, their collaboration was the focus of Catherine Lu’s Grammy-nominated PBS/NPR episode “Meet the Queens of Quarantine Poetry.”