perhappened mag
issue 9: RAIN OR SHINE
aro ace girl's
petition
KELLY WEBER
and it’s true sometimes / someone looks at me asking nothing / and I want that face cupped between my palms / a door hinged open / with a gray severed wing rocking in it / I saw once walking into my office / and its small brick rooms / everything that tethers / twisting red from that bare knob of bone / a whole series of inward knots / I hold in my hands / and it’s true I’ve never broken up with anyone / never let anyone kiss my jaw into a riot of thistle / a ring of dark-eyed junco and barbed wire / I’m bound to / never been that hell across a throat / but sometimes I want to sit with someone’s wrists / between my knees pearl / their pulse with eggs from the fallen wasp nest / drowned in a honeycomb of spit and bark / the work of such careful attention / and days / I used to tend an ashbed where the excavated skeletons / of ancient deer and horses sprawled / bellies torn open by dogs and birth canals / tangled with small bones / they wanted to keep close / I have tried to commit a life to such bright forgetting / of the many fractures I’ve asked blessed / again and again the rattlesnakes crushed on highway / shadow of a train strutted across my body / hauling blades to wind farms toothed and bleached / like the maw of some lost ichthyosaur / and yes it’s true / I want / to bless the water broken / to make one more day to live / on raw / gasoline and looking at someone who trusts / their softness to my breathing / in the spaces we share / I get it / dying for someone I mean / I’ll always want to tug their dark coat / tighter press my forehead to theirs against wind say / goddamn / before they walk into snow / remove a bone too soon / and it bruises the memory of water / from the ground
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