I roll the word party around in my mouth 
like an unripe rose hip. I take myself for a walk, 
find a cicada bunched up in what’s left of its skin. 
It crawls out mint green, pale pink, and leaves 
the shell of its own self behind, ghostly. Rose hips, 
too, I think are ghosts—although I’m never sure 
if rose hips are the thing that comes before 
or after the rose. I know at some point, some 
times, wasps crawl into them, maybe for food, or shelter, 
or a party. A party. The last party I went to 
was two springs ago, two crawlings of cicadas, 
two swellings and burstings of blossoms. It feels dim, 
now, the memory of it wrapped up in the buzz, the hum,
the voices crowded into Kaytlyn’s apartment
before it was painted pale pink, before the break-up 
split it like a rose hip. Seeds must spill from something 
like that, right? Something new must emerge?
I watch the cicada crawl out of itself, go nowhere, 
harden up as quickly as it can in the bright air, 
but me—I am still soft. The petals that come 
before the hardening. The cicada
still shivering like a nymph. 

Bios

Dessa Bayrock

Dessa Bayrock lives in Ottawa with two cats and a variety of succulents, one of which occasionally blooms. She is the poetry editor at Shrapnel Magazine and was the 2021 winner of the Diana Brebner Prize. You can find her, or at least more about her, at dessabayrock.com, and at @yodessa on Twitter. [provided November 2023]