by Elizabeth Wing
Last winter I spooled words back into my lungs Swung hard and split the cedar Curled with you, feverish & rosy, in a cocoon of sheepskin When you were welted red with poison oak
You ignored science The gashes bled through: my ivied-over girlhood, witch-pride strong as juniper. The holy Yawn of cave. Billboard disagreements, amen. The things I’d sharpie on post-its to my roommates: (Here’s what I need from you and here’s where I draw the line & you’re worthy of all the good things & god is dead)
Everything flung in hoarse orbits around you Today I didn’t text you the pictures of a fox I knew you’d love, poking along the road Dishes undone under a blood moon: I step out into the night that smells like gasoline & peonies
Used to like how you clamped onto my hand like a deep-sea clam when I tried to leave We wore grime in our hair like we’d invented truth
I could draw whole taxonomies of shame With scabby eye-holes looking in The pith of spotted hemlock in our teeth Salamander skin, necklace of abalone & silver I unspool/ and I throw it all in
