All summer, I resolve to live
forever. There is no better time to fuck
the line, conceive a circle. When again
will I have these sun-soaked eyes, 
this homebound skin?
I swing by body in the lofty womb 
of the hammock. Even here, cradled 
in midair, I’m still closer to the earth than sky.
The birds land in the boughs above, startled
by their own return. The arborist 
proclaimed the oak was generations
old, its roots nestled deep
in another century. Even after all this time,
I remember the hour of my birth—
how it felt to be held in my entirety,
dreaming up the swollen lung
of the world. How I arrived
with empty hands. The feast I made
of breath. 

The children buried a butterfly
in the backyard. In the morning
they remembered, dug it up to see
what dying had done but by then
it was long gone. I had no explanation
except the memory of the day we buried
you. It rained like in the movies
and we pinned you to the earth
with stones. I didn’t visit enough
in your final years but when I visit
your grave now, you’re not there.
And isn’t that just life and death
for you? One always shifting its weight
to the other foot. The butterfly’s gone
searching for new wings, I tell them.
What I mean is, the dead don’t like to stay
dead. It never ceases to baffle the living. 

I brought home a hole
punched plant. Small marvel
of chlorophyll and white space. 
It defies logic, how a thing
intent on surviving 
can forego pieces of itself. 
Haven’t I spent my life
in upright wonder,
winged and waiting 
on a windowsill?
I’ve swallowed the light
of every silver moon. 
There are gaps
in my understanding.

                after Kelly Grace Thomas

‍

Give up the ghost. A love gone
cold in the night. Take your spare
life out of the suitcase. Stale
as a mothball moon. Hold a body
underwater. Your own. Return
to the house that raised you.
Gather wood. Watch it burn.
Know your instruments: knees, mouth,
a gulp of sky. Dirty deeds
go on a string. Finger them
like beads in church. Ask
for the one true thing 
you really want. Hand to heart.
The one true thing. Listen.
A sparrow in the rafters,
preacher and poet
trilling on about god.

Our sweet
pink elephant
is turning blue
in the face.
What we don’t say 
sits here with us
sipping 
lemon-ginger tea. 
Throat clears, a cold 
shoulder. Clink 
of china on white-
knuckled marble.
Remember the fight 
about the water stain? 
You said,
it was only water, 
how could it leave 
a stain? 
The way
desire slips out
in the middle 
of the night. 
The way it enters 
a different room. 
How could it leave?
‍The way 
we laughed 
and laughed
and promised 
not to lie
but truth 
is such 
a prankster. 

She opens her sovereign heart
to the machete of the world
closes her eyes
already somewhere else 
bending a field of wheat 
to the wind
scanning for collapse 
of sturdy things
wings folded in her lap
wings like prayer-
steepled hands.
In her softest parts
she is rosy cheeks 
and bone meal
feeding all the rivers 
that cut through the earth 
bleeding auburn hunger 
down her legs
running toward any joy 
that will have her
stumbling upon it
like she didn’t know
it was there 
like it wasn’t always
digging its chafed finger 
into the gash and asking 
to be healed.

‍

Title inspired by Suzanne Richardson’s collection, The Softest Part of a Woman is a Wound