Thursday, July 3, 2008

I had forgotten how suffocating summer can be, how it creeps up and over shoulders,
backs,
hands,
extending tendrils with feigned nonchalance
allowing us the choice of un-seeing.

she found me lying beneath a tree, twirling fingers in the air
half-heartedly mapping an escape route, losing the words as soon as they passed my lips.

of course I knew:
if I allowed summer to devour me whole there would be no more pretending that I wasn’t already disappearing
that I couldn’t feel myself pulled by the suction of your absence,
your maybe-never-being,
your bending of time and space and truth and truth and truth.


I’d rather let what was left of my frame, sinews, and bones descend.
a sadder, softer exit.


the epitaph would read
here she lies,
swallowed
by the 7th of June.

the heat stole her
without much struggle.

1 comment:

Liz Townsend said...

Rachel, I had no idea you had this space,
a place for a voice when a face finds sympathy in the elbows, the shoulders, spine, soles and other surfaces, easily concealed.
Not from hiding. Not for protection. No.

For release.
To fold my threads back into my pockets, unraveled from a day of
being.