(no subject)

[some_stars]

The Soup Bones Rustle
after Deborah Digges


What a day to come back to the world--
my brain wide and aching, mosquito bites
red scattered across my belly.
The rain's hitting down on the roof,
I'm alone on the second floor,
coming back to life as best I can.

When the sun is bright it's too bright.
When the moon is bright it's not bright enough.
When the stars are out I turn my head
like a baby, refusing a spoon, unable to bear
another song. The blackness in me,
the thick slice of something syrupy,
can't hear the earth's rotation,
but we feel it, and we take it into us.

What a day to come back, forgetting my papers,
my faces, the grey one, the green one,
even my skin I forgot. What a day
for the music that loops in my head like ribbon candy
to drag to a halt, emptying its skirts
into my lap, what a song to hold
as it drips between my fingers. And what a day
to make my peace--

there's no container
that can hold this black-
ploughed furrow in me
I am compelled to love.
A deep gash across my purposes.

In another life I've done it,
taken the jump off the shoulder of the interstate,
swallowed the rummage of pills down with vodka.
I was seventeen, twenty-two, twenty-five.
There's an echo in my every word--
the thousand-mile space between decision
after choice, after choice, after weariness.
Under this sun, I drag on, limping
from my bent right hip, my sore left knee,
the parts of me that tell
what only I know: I've come back,
world, but unwilling. Dance with me.