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a conversation over a dissected frog

Love, these days:
we pretend
the blood of animals is a vessel for
fluent language. Listen. Violence is this
sound, common and cruel— 
I never learned
differences of breaking to blessing. In
here we slice light from pelvis to neck
understanding
girls who cleaved their chests all
orderly, lined up, desperate
days of homily and harmony;
I’ve never felt worship so real.
These relinquishing instincts.
Tonight I might dream:
have you ever wanted
to touch. To fold like a crane,
light and sound only. Look at
us. All we do is want and ache.
Crushed by the weight of gorgeous sin,
that catharsis is a second coming.

burdened by the crucifix on the classroom wall

We are seventeen and
everything is beautiful,
even endings. Chalices brimming with
delinquent worship, sanctioned
but reverent. Our bodies are gilded scalpels
to wield, to divide beyond these
spearlight Sunbelt days,
believing that God, too, is
found in briefness. The sacrificial
air and lack; laboratory-grade
to carve out a soul. Dissection
that admit the desire for use.
How brave to choose
Love,
the breath between sacrifice and stillness. I ask
for both. A life comprised in parades of glory, organs
lined up prettily: distilled to fluorescence;
Jesus’s still, stone eyes. Am I describing death or
The absence of atonement. I sometimes feel
like I am my wanting,
that you could rapture me whole.

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Trini Rogando is a student from Virginia. Her poems can be found in the Blue Marble Review, the Lumiere Review, Ample Remains, and elsewhere. If she’s not writing, she’s most likely mulling over marimba melodies or hoping for a hug. Her Twitter is @triniwashere.

for an image version of this piece, click here

​perhappened mag
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