WHICH ONCE WAS HUMAN

Which once was human. Now has fled. 

Sounds fall dead

in the water

and bury an ache

We disguise the girl and her foulness. We coat her in makeup, perfume. 

Dressed up 

and ready. 

We take the fallen body and fill it with sound

a stage made 

for ruin

Should her body break

Should she succumb to reaching

A reaching skyward that comes with an inevitable crash. 

A falling. 

A tiny thing mewling on impact. 

All together they could fill a silo

with wood.

Your brain  

absolutely bare.

It’s been so long since you felt eyes 

on the back of your head.

A figure low, wide

and brimming. 

You must sleep. You must.

You step outside. You pass half-giant bodies. 

They are cold and compressing. It has been some time since they settled. 

They are turning and cannot stop. 

You walk on.

Something long fills your shoulder.

The wood is silent. The woods, silent.

They have seen you. They turn. 

You must sleep. You must.  

You pass a great courtyard. Something is burning. You are so tired. 

Your clothes change with every step, so that every movement finds a new utility. 

You have dreamed this for so long.

A home filling up with rot

and rice

strangers caught in your hair

like a harbor

You have dreamed of such bodies

the stripping motion

the unhurried component. 

You know them only through their detached parts. 

A sounding so wide

that it echoes

beyond each of its parts

It drags itself over the page.

It leaves a grimy soak

Saw-toothed

and watered,

the girls are tracking in red wet

all the way up and

all the way down

This, their lost site.

The opportunity to become 

a growth

Behind the empty house you find a rotting

mare, her foal still inside

will be the stallion you ride

into battle

You have touched

your tongue to death

to rancid milk

to flat skin

Behind, your rows and rows of girls

wave the flag high

There is nothing left of our home but the garden is well-maintained. Someone has kept the wild at bay. You remember so little. You only remember so much. 

Something dissolved

when we received this body

a body that is both ours and other’s

which wears itself thin

It is somewhere

where memory snaps back into place,

a place that folds

and recalls. 

We

call back,

faceless 

and running