Denature

My biology professor
corrects herself saying
“Sorry, nothing dies,
instead we call it denature.”
Photosynthesis
even little kids learn
the denaturing
of the world around us.
We watch young leaves
darken in late summer,
turn to piles of deep
crimson and gold,
some brittle and brown
by late October.
Kids learning,
then throwing themselves,
rolling around in all those
tiny deaths.

She corrects herself again,
and goes on to explain
that the chloroplast
becomes unstable,
it denatures,
leaving behind the carotenoids.
The natural colorful pigment
hidden greedily by
healthy green chloroplast.
I jot down my notes
finding myself back,
circling denature
again and again.
When my summer is over,
when I denature,
I hope to leave
something behind
as lovely as those
cascading reds and yellows.

Denature was originally published in Black Heart Magazine October 2017 Issue: Summer’s End