Natalie Marino


The Unasked 

When love was in a masquerade ballroom 
Where stars twinkle in a black paper sky
I followed you like a baby duckling.
The garden was a farm growing wires.

When the moon’s shell cracked

I dreamt of your face
And your warm walk
And your face 

That always makes me remember.

Where would we have gone? 
The only voice is from the barbed wire 
Between your blank flowers and me.

I waited so long for you to come.

Time erased you like dust does to death

I finally entombed our pictures
Stolen flowers got lost in the sea.

The words in your letters still fill the room
Like pink poppies’ perfume, making me sick. 

Strangers’ suicides are suffocating,
Refusing to answer unasked questions.












Natalie Marino is a writer, mother, and physician. She earned her BA in American Literature from UCLA and her MD from the University of Pittsburgh. She has been published by or has poems forthcoming in Barren Magazine Detritus Online, Idle Ink, Indolent Books, Mineral Lit Mag, and Royal Rose Magazine. She lives in Thousand Oaks, California with her husband and two daughters.