1.
Precision can save your life, or it can destroy
you according to its simple sequence—
one protein misplaced, over.
Vagary also has its promises, as in:
silken threads of a zygote—
twisting like algae in the tidal pool.
As in: where am I going amidst all this,
shuttled within
the violent grace
of a splayed cocoon?
Make no mistake—technique will get you noticed—
equally, it can help you arrive, undetected
at the primordial spring,
if that is your preference—
to unspool the skein.
Consider the factors; evolve accordingly.
Root in and out of consciousness.
Bruise the womb’s drupes or
loom them into fullness,
thirty and six strokes of the comb
along the banks of the purple river—
Presently, a mouth will unhinge
at radical angles
to stitch the borders
along the edges of your suffering.
What is described within is not the same
as that which sustained you—
she is gone for good,
rooted beneath your memory.
2.
There was a thin mucosa
between you and I,
interspersed with the messengers
that fought the body’s dominion.
All so that I might latch
and mutate—these four lobes:
my brothers and sisters—
each of you a planet, a dead moon,
a random debris—
you now arrange yourselves
into a novel coherence—
One side creates your wound;
the other side closes mine.
3.
Afterbirth—detachment—the open folio—
signaling the closed cloud—pour forth—
one vessel—through another—diverging in entropy—
4.
They took the mass in hand
like a maimed animal—
mule red against nitrile blue,
and prepared a burnt offering.
Steel sarcophagus or open grave:
can’t you see:
I am losing faith.
5.
I could have eaten you,
as one eats the forest of new bones.
Each of their echoes:
sinister and hallow
like the pale sound of the bell
cast in the pit near the cathedral
where all the workmen were left
to starve amongst each other.
I could have swallowed them all,
so as to stave my horror at the invasion.
6.
Better yet to have
buried you in the garden, amidst the cherry
and plum trees, the aphids and ants,
and the docile recognition
of earthworms.
Why were you not born with a face
by which to properly mourn you?
In the mirror,
I see your zone of differentiation,
dividing in
shallow glass esters; a delta
shifting into a feast of reefs—
the thin ghost of your skin
touching mine,
cradling together our lost
bloods in separation.
Sonya is a writer and poet residing in the Pacific Northwest. Her work has appeared in Arcturus, Paraselene, Latin American Literary Review, Roanoke Review, and others. Her first book, One Row After/Bir Sıra Sonra, was published by First Matter Press in 2022. Her second book is forthcoming with South Broadway Press.
