What Happened to the Body
After hex, after ice through the lip, after diagnosis,
I had to carry my head before me in a clear bowl.
I rolled it into the creek, where it spun, smeared, rolled back.
Then, my head was a glass ball I had to hold
with both hands on top of my blood dress.
The light bent through my teeth onto the frosted path.
I tried to read the bright marks it clawed on the spruces,
but the ghost words kept curling.
My buttons dripped and blurred.
The trees bent in, but they did not tend.
Each step was a lesson in tilting. I meant to fall
down like the needles
but my glass face fought my meaning.
I once had a body like yours, I said.
No one nodded. Not even
the trees whose crowns tipped like mine,
not even the sorry wind.
It was a relief to be alone in this lurch and prayer.
It was no relief. Alone and the churn of it
struck my glass cheeks and rang.
My arms, holding the head, began to tire.
I meant to lie down in the ice
but grief made me stand
ringing and ringing inside this skin.
I had to carry my head before me in a clear bowl.
I rolled it into the creek, where it spun, smeared, rolled back.
Then, my head was a glass ball I had to hold
with both hands on top of my blood dress.
The light bent through my teeth onto the frosted path.
I tried to read the bright marks it clawed on the spruces,
but the ghost words kept curling.
My buttons dripped and blurred.
The trees bent in, but they did not tend.
Each step was a lesson in tilting. I meant to fall
down like the needles
but my glass face fought my meaning.
I once had a body like yours, I said.
No one nodded. Not even
the trees whose crowns tipped like mine,
not even the sorry wind.
It was a relief to be alone in this lurch and prayer.
It was no relief. Alone and the churn of it
struck my glass cheeks and rang.
My arms, holding the head, began to tire.
I meant to lie down in the ice
but grief made me stand
ringing and ringing inside this skin.
September 2024
Sally Rosen Kindred is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Where the Wolf (Diode Editions), winner of the 2020 Diode Book Contest and the 2021 Julie Suk Award. Her poems have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Cincinnati Review MiCRos, Alaska Quarterly Review, Whale Road Review, and Kenyon Review Online.
Art: Kelly Cressio-Moeller, Childhood Faultlines. Mixed media: acrylic, ink, paper, mica flakes on basswood panel, 2023.