Daisy

by Leeor Margalit

Daisy is blonde in the way that sunshine is blonde.
I know that doesn’t make sense, but it does.
Daisy has a smile on her face
and scars all up and down her arms and legs
which doesn’t make sense, but it does.
Silence is the loudest cry for help,
which doesn’t make sense, but it does.
If a girl shoots herself in the middle of a field
and no one is around to hear it,
did she really die? did she even live?
She was alone in that field for three hours
with a loaded gun 
and when I was told she never pulled the trigger 
I let out a rattled sob of relief; had I been told otherwise, 
there would not have been enough oxygen in the world;
I could have chased it for the rest of my life
and never caught my breath.

---

“‘Daisy’ was written towards the end of my service and while it deals with difficult topics, ultimately it is a poem meant to be finished with a sigh of relief, embodying my service as a whole.” —Leeor Margalit

Leeor Margalit is a 24 year old Yemenite/Ashkenazi woman from Southern California currently studying at Tel Aviv University. Her work has recently appeared in The Sutterville Review, As You Were: The Military Review, The Thing Itself, and Rigorous Magazine, among other publications. You can find her work on instagram @leeormargalitpoems.