She sits at a table in the library.
Books about plants and minerals and animals
are stacked in towers or spread out in front of her. 
She copies out notes on fungi 
with neon pink gel pen
into her square-lined notebook. 
She flicks her black bangs behind her ear. 
Her hair is streaked with jolts of blue. 
She flips through a book on North American birds,
writing about their skeletal structures 
and the meanings of their songs. 
 
When the sun starts to set, 
she takes the books to a cart 
to be reshelved and walks home. 
She bends down a few times on the way
to collect newly-unfurled dandelion leaves. 
She admires a large, jagged piece of rose quartz
and leaves it where it is. 

She spends a lot of her summer alone, 
collecting cicada skins and rescuing trapped animals.
She weaves a basket from willow branches and cattails
from the marsh. She keeps precious feathers 
and dried petals inside it. 

She teaches herself how to focus her intentions. 
She learns how to dye pale thread in elderberry juice
and she embroiders a sheet with the stars 
under which she was born. The night air is warm
and she plots astrological alignments. 
She lets the moonlight wash over her skin 
and her various collections 
and she wishes for community and strength.