Burial
One thousand paper cranes we fold
to fill your wood box and send you off.
That morning we had crossed the river
to the forest where your girl body lies cold.
Kiss-and-peck paper now cuts our palms.
Sun shines through these folds. Bowing over you
we tuck paper cranes between your toes.
Place them as guards at your mouth
where they make of your lips
pillows for their heads. We twist paper
to tendrils, braid your fine hair.
The cranes dance like snow, floating
in the bowl of your cupped hands.
For your nostrils, cranes the size
of grains of rice.
We slip origami fortune tellers
into your dress pocket, your breast brimming
with birds. We ease shut the lid of your coffin.
Cranes rain on cedar. In the sweet dark,
feel the tap-tap of paper falling.
Silk and bunting. We march with the in
out of our breathing.
Pick a color, pick a number, you will marry,
you will travel, when you die, little one,
all your friends come.
to fill your wood box and send you off.
That morning we had crossed the river
to the forest where your girl body lies cold.
Kiss-and-peck paper now cuts our palms.
Sun shines through these folds. Bowing over you
we tuck paper cranes between your toes.
Place them as guards at your mouth
where they make of your lips
pillows for their heads. We twist paper
to tendrils, braid your fine hair.
The cranes dance like snow, floating
in the bowl of your cupped hands.
For your nostrils, cranes the size
of grains of rice.
We slip origami fortune tellers
into your dress pocket, your breast brimming
with birds. We ease shut the lid of your coffin.
Cranes rain on cedar. In the sweet dark,
feel the tap-tap of paper falling.
Silk and bunting. We march with the in
out of our breathing.
Pick a color, pick a number, you will marry,
you will travel, when you die, little one,
all your friends come.
March / April 2023
Nicole Brooks is a writer and editor who earned her MFA in poetry at Butler University, where she served as poetry editor of Booth. Her poems have appeared in Minola Review, The Indianapolis Review, Barren Magazine, and Anti-Heroin Chic. She works in communications at Purdue University and lives in Lafayette, Indiana.
Art: Aiyana Masla. Friends on a picnic. Watercolor