It Is What It Is

by Dion O'Reilly

And I have what I have—
light-shot maple leaves,
lifted by wind, sun-bleached
tools lost where I left them,
a mind that wanders
its own dingy alleys.

Still, it feels good to miss
what I never had, to imagine
some other me, some other life:
mirror self who loves
a taller man who builds
a taller house, ten-foot windows,
a view of the Sound,

life where I visit a mother,
who never notices
my gaunt face, never makes
the health aides cry, mother
who’s pleased to see me—
an orchid,

not a hawk. But then, look at her lazy
drift in the heat-lifted air—
a god watching me
with her five-mile eye.

Listen to her screams
rip rifts in the sky.

She chose my field
to hunt in, my baby
conies to feed on.
She chose the perch
in my stately pine,
tops it like a crown.
She’s my raptor, self-
contained and hungry.
There is no other.

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Dion O'Reilly is the author of Sadness of the Apex Predator (Cornerstone 2025), Ghost Dogs (Terrapin Books 2020); and Limerence, a 2025 finalist for the Floating Bridge Chapbook Competition. Her work appears in Cincinnati Review, Rhino, Alaska Quarterly Review, Gulf Coast, The Sun, and Rattle. A ​podcaster at The Hive Poetry Collective and co-editor of Ent•Trance Journal, she splits her time between California and Washington.