It started
with skin—fur, scales, outerness—
and then warm. Something to fill, the shell a pocket
for a god to store trinkets. Or it started with want—urge,
desire, reaching—and want became hands. Became
grabbing. Became palm-soft having. It started
with stories voiced tenderly into darkness, started with mouths,
with eating, intimate knowing. Or with water, moon-drawn
and trembling. With ancientness, an old woman
knitting molecules into the tiny stitches of your eyelids. With breath, expansion
and contraction, keeping and not. Started with skulls, with density, formed in rock
layers mineralizing over centuries. Your body is strata, you can read each line
back to the beginning. Back to this—the skin, water, want. Back to fingernails
and friction. This body, just fissures, just sun in the gaps, just edges
misfit together. Try to trace the seams on each
fingertip, find your start. Your body is marked
map, has it taken you home? Your hands crafted feet for you
to stand on, your blood channeled valley paths across
your expanse, do you remember
the burst and burn
of your flood? Do you feel
made?
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 25, Issue 6.
Sarah Brockhaus is an MFA student at Louisiana State University and has a bachelor’s degree in English from Salisbury University. Her poems can be found in Sugar House Review, North American Review, The Shore, New South and elsewhere.See all items about Sarah Brockhaus