Ashley Anglin

Showiest sparkler on the stage already, 

everything must be yellow when you’re 4:

your doll’s clothes are all sunflowers and daisies, 

I dye a load of whites and a tiny gi.

Not quite 14, you’re dealt a bitter lemon: 

September’s leaves through hospital windows,

winter days with (ironically) no citrus,

trading June’s sun for bile and methotrexate.

Now, blooming goldenrod and school buses

signal a brighter season. Even if 

life flashes “caution” more than it says “go”

and normal isn’t where we’re back to yet,

I dare to dream of you at 24:

spinning this into the gold you were and are.

Ashley Anglin writes prose, and nothing this autobiographical. Yet somehow, her sonnet (disguised as flash) appeared in Minison Zine 8/14/22 (writing as "v. north"); another is prologue to her novel Undiscovered, coming 2/2023. Her short fiction has/will appear/ed in Miniskirt Magazine, Tree and Stone, and anthologies Everything Change Vol. I and Panthology. She is a language professor and mom: thanks to unsung rockstar sibling/donor “18,” "14" is newly 15.