Ezra Lebovitz is a writer and student who is passionate about literature, history, music, and human rights. He attended the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio this past summer, has received awards from the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and the New Jersey Council of English Teachers, and works as an editorial intern for the Blueshift Journal. In his spare time, he enjoys making bad puns and trying too hard.
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When it happens,
this is how it happens:
moss spilling out of his mouth when he breathes. Shadow backing into
skin.
Trading tongue for seawater.
It’s not his fault—he saw the way ultraviolet and earth danced
around each other like mid-morning lovers. The shadow between them. All he wanted was to introduce soil to sunlight and sing about the opposite of intervention. All he found was a way
to stop drowning. To become the sea instead.
The boy opens his mouth to apologize
but finds clover sprouting from his lips. He wants to be a greater good
so he lets it grow.
Here is how it happens: boy gets tired of bleeding
and becomes the ground instead.
He can’t help it. He gives boyhood over to earth
and makes of himself an elegy.
This is how the body decides
it is not a thing worth keeping
and pins blades of grass
in the place of veins,
replaces reflections with tinfoil.
Here is how boy buries himself
before he is born.
Watch for the ground:
find him beneath it, turning the body to springtime.