Fun Things to Do in Columbus, Ohio #7: Visit the Whetstone Park of Roses

// Maddie Woda

You’re snapping movie star highlight reels
with an old film camera you stole for eight dollars.
You swore the owner of the store was dead
in the back room. We are outside a white clapboard
cottage that sells flowers and bread, and I can’t
tell if it’s your soap or the daylilies in the sun.

If you leave in a week it is only because
you love me and when we invoke the muses,
fresh on our tongues like sourdough and rye,
it is because we’ve chosen to. A perfect storm,
I keep promising, a perfect storm. You ask
me to pose but wait until I break my stance.

We’ve been arguing about reclaiming: carny
culture, the plight of the bees, Lolita, the “c word.”
It tastes so bad because there’s no male equivalent.

When we part it is as sunburned oddballs,
comrades in the same war. You say goodbye first
but wait until I break my stance.