HERE, TOGETHER WE’RE LOST AT SEA
Give me, my love, the fragments
of your prayers: the remnants
of your bones. Remember
that time our bones crashed
into each other: how
our bodies broke but nobody
noticed. Tell me how this
is your sea: the constant flow
of prayers: if the words soak
long enough in the waters
then they dissolve into bones, into
the hope from our wet eyes.
Show me, my love, your open
wounds: your veins like the
currents. Show me your folded
hands: how your fingers
come together like a
ribcage. How folded hands
keep your heart in place. Tell
me: what it does it mean to be
together, to be
undone.
PSALM OF UNDOING
This is how my body began unravelling: I heard
a raven sing into my bones – let’s plan
a murder: a gathering. A longing of unpinned
lungs. And I remembered this: a man’s
hands…a deboning. How a piece of me falls
while my body appears whole. I never
understood this: how a young girl’s prayer
can say somebody love me and the words
raise goose bumps on tree limbs like a cool
breeze. How spirits aid: filling the night air like
constellations. I let them rest in my
ribcage: this is enough to keep my body
breathing. Because my body says please,
says no more. I fled deep into
the forest: into tree limbs – how I clutched them
like they were my mother’s outstretched
arms. I remember feeling the moonlight sink
into my skin: how my lungs opened. How my
bones ached. And I saw that my ribs were fashioned
from my mother’s hope. She always said to honey
my prayers with words like be with me
always. And so I learned what it meant to be
broken yet whole: be marked by a prayer that
says, Lord, love me until my dying day. How
these body aches allow a young girl to feel
spirits inside her lungs: be gathering among
the star-scattered sky and see how pinkened
skin means breathe, means enough.
_______________________
Ashley Mares has poetry that has appeared or is forthcoming in Menacing Hedge, Whale Road Review, Rogue Agent, Hermeneutic Chaos, Whiskey Island, The Indianola Review, White Stag, and others. She is currently completing her J.D. in Monterey, Ca, where she lives with her husband. Read more of her poetry at ashleymarespoetry.wordpress.com and follow her @ash_mares2.
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