PurpleTranch

My house is a home for silence, my body a betraying whisper against its quiescence: a single house sparrow in the attic, cupped in the mouth of a ghost. Once, this was a forest; outside the window, a memory of branches presses its skin against the glass, longing to river itself against each blank surface. I will suffer no intrusion, save my own; it is needful, this quiet. It is a wall. One day, I will carve out my voicebox, leave it sitting outside the door to dry in the sun. I can only hope that, beneath its flesh, there is a seed I can harvest, some bloody pit of the same kind I grew out of, that it may root and grow strong, that no man

A mile from the shore, an island rises, born on the bodies of a thousand horseshoe crabs. They have become sand and dirt and grass and tree and root. They whisper, day and night; and they have known grief and heartache and joy and love – they have walked alone through cold waters, and in finding each other, built their sanctuary on salt and sea breeze and the shells of those who came before.

We huddled together, cranestepped toward shade and water while old men played cards and drank. We broke our wandering wherever we could,   shot rifle and shotgun like prayer, trapped frogs in bottles like charms for rain. Each dirt road was soft and torn, and us: wild, breaking land and tree, digging up roots with fingers. Each night we were made stupid by our need to burn up, hunting the ghosts of deer, breathless with the dark heat of summer. We would be found,   shepherded by the promise of water, dissolved in our civility. Even the oldest man remembered what it is to wear the body like flame, to need to become animal, sand,

In sleep, I am isochronal, a tempo – but there was a moment of brightness: sudden, a held breath, the whisper of soft movement nearby, scratch of skin against the linens; and you, tidal: thrashing mildly against the morning and me -