The Spine that Learned to Soften to Moss

Rooting into the earth is rooting into sky.

Every hymn I kept inside my ribs became moss on the altar stone—

a prayer soft enough to remember me when I could not.

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The hymn I gasped became moss on the altar stone.

Adorned with Red Spider Lilies,

this is where death wasn’t afraid to become again.

On the altar laid remnants of a moon I once wished upon.

how different grief looks when love reminds us the dream is different now.

Rue sings with the wildflowers

watching the tears my thoughts convince me shouldn’t remind my body

I am still just broken glass on the—

I’m not, I whisper from out my ribs.

Marble skies paint the heavens with mirrors

and somewhere between rot and root,

I ghost-walked myself out of a gallow made of dandelions and joy.

It was when I offered my soul my own damnation

and asked the darkness to reveal to me the light it swallows whole,

that I dissolved behind the veil of blue-greys and crimson-mauves.

The soul converges with the heart here,

and the runes dormant in my spine awaken with fervor.

...

a bumble bee landed on a petal sprouting from moss and breath,

as dawn warmed gray glistens sweetly in the maple

of another wish hoping the day makes them real.

I laid down at the altar of forest-quilted stone

asking to hold my sacred too.

And the altar listened back…