slivers of light
poem 013
slivers of light
at an age when my marvelling body began to carve passages through the hedgerow and into the heart of a southern forest i began to carry memories i began to have a past when i met a box turtle and thought so highly of them i ferried them around in a small cart— a feral procession through the middleworld to honor my first friend. when a cropduster’s descent disrupted the worlds i had built and left everything in fright— i stood still riddled with awe and confusion before laughing my way into the kind of danger i could play in. when great-grandpa Levi lured me with sweet peppermint sticks until one day he didn’t— the family gathered in fear around his white dragon spewing flames and black smoke we watched his house burn. when there were no streetlights along our road of sand and clay countless stars fixed my gaze and came to me in colors i can no longer see— something holy still stares back at me from space. when i escaped the prison of my bedroom from a window over and over again— chasing my own wonder into the swamp and sand once with my sister to whom i can never offer enough apologies once i hid us beneath the bridge our family cried our names in a sob and fury because—as Levi would say— maybe we drownt in the hog waller beneath the bridge that day i lost the ability to become invisible my sister needed protection beneath the bridge that day came a serpent long and black in the creek rippling about the world undulating into the future into me before swimming away my family’s cries broke free of coherence i rose from the edge of the underworld prepared for my beating. when one sweltering day i stabbed again and again clean through the walls of my bedroom with a steak knife— the body of the sun leapt through the cracks and entered. oh how badly i needed those slivers of light.