in the event i become some unrecognizable beast.

• Author: Marie, Aurielle

reader, it is so simple: i am a tender bird parading as this vulture. i love things unto their very bone & yet have always held grief a fragile vein or deprived myself its honey. i misplace what simple sanities i meant to keep precious: my composure, a bloodlet. the roses from my funeral also, left to accordion the homes we flee like fugitives evictions among the weathered estate of our arms & all i manage to carry into each line is a mason jar of old teeth, a cicada, an aged bruise. the thing is; grief is relative, i wake to the limp memory of missing kindred each day & what do you know about endurance? by noon each day, i'm dancing to the hook of my brothers last song, a wild flocking, i raise my hands & cut the tumor from between his hips, the moon rises, there, rest our bodies into the egun sliver beneath it. can you name them? this conjuring morbid, yes. and also, necessary, what else can a...