I have a clinical gaze and a
body like a knife, knife like
a ragged moon and a man
who yells
GOD BLESS YOU MA’AM PRAY FOR THE UNBORN.
I pray for the born and for
my body to birth something like a sun
(the soft kind). In the heat of winter,
it claws lit angles around the room
before murmuring into more pleasant shapes,
blanketing the sill with creamy gold.
On a walk, I watch it gently build a crown
in your hair
and I fill it with good thoughts, the way
I empty my head on the road.
Delaware is a flat line and a slow bleed.
I can be light I can be the
sun’s slow breach over bridge,
the kind of bridge that makes you tired
just looking at its great heave over
water’s greater one and wondering
How sturdy can it be, really?
Where are the bones of this thing?
My clinical gaze is hungry when
I don’t want it to be,
my hands two snakes on the wheel.
I will them to loosen, to hold the leather
as one carries an egg, the unborn, or
small paper shapes
translucent with glue, cell wall-thin.
Years from now I will open for you
like a moon,
plain and bright, prayers
swinging through my whole skeleton.
Kaleigh Spollen (she/her) is a writer based in Philadelphia, PA.