By Joshua Lillie
If I were a saguaro
I’d only be two feet tall
and if I walked out
and stood still
in that flat stretch
of wild desert
for at least three years,
pincushion cactus
would begin to corral
around my feet
and fence me in and
they wouldn’t grow
much higher than
my ankles but I
would continue
to grow old
until I collapsed in
on myself like a galaxy
fizzling out like a lightbulb
turned off and on again
a few too many times,
and exiting the desert,
the pincushions that fed
off my warmth and shade
would shrivel up and turn
back into particles
too small to notice too.
Joshua Lillie is a bartender in Tucson, Arizona. His poems have appeared in Stanchion Zine, Wildscape Literary Journal, Valley Verbomania Literary Review, Sonora Review, Tarry Lit and Black Lily Zine. He is the author of the chapbook Small Talk Symphony (Finishing Line Press, 2025) and was a finalist for the 2024 Jack McCarthy Book Prize Contest from Write Bloody Publishing. In his free time, he enjoys searching for lizards with his wife and cat.
A Curious Moon 