Breanna Grow

CONTACT:
Email: bmgrow@gmail.com

BIO:
Breanna Grow is a lifelong writer and former reporter working in the nonprofit sector. She moved from Central Illinois to Madison in 2021. Her poetry explores intergenerational trauma, mental illness, healing, mortality, spirituality and nature. She lives in Madison with her partner and her cat. You can reach her at bmgrow@gmail.com, and you can call her Bree (note: it is not spelled like the cheese).  

Poetry

Untitled

Darling,
when I die,
you’re going to want
to let them keep
my body in some
semblance of whole
for a little while
longer.

Don’t – you know
the parts of me
that have always wanted
to be wholly
consumed,
once, by the orchestral
swell, once, by your open
mouth, once, by the late-night wonderment
fever,

and now, by the unseen occupying
forces, ready
to carry out
marching orders.
Or maybe,
darling,
you can think of them
more like missionaries
come with good news:

they have come to
render my cells
ecstatic.

Don’t worry,
darling,

I will still be
more empty space
than not.

And when I am
all done rearranging,
and you’re deciding what
to do with me,
will you do me a favor?

Will you plant me
someplace, where
up from the snow
I can burst forth
in the color of hope
and remind you that
life has a use
for winter?

Will you plant me
someplace, where
I can grow full and
ripe beneath the sun,
and show you the
goodness that is yours for
the taking?

Will you plant me
someplace, where
I can breeze along from
branch to branch, just ahead
on the eager path, calling back,

Darling, come look –