From JOAN
I spent all my loneliness with you here speaking in turn to the isle of grass the velvet-eared cattle & the sawgrass spines as the coin of sun declined each day I closed the gates to the field & tomatoes grew in the dark like the blushing minds of yawning children guttered candles spilled their pinebrushed light and bells spelled out the path to vespers a cold wind blew in blusters upon my spine & I had more thoughts than there were rocks in the river but they weren’t heavy to me not yet not yet anything this was Domrémy my squire would say later good luck is like a turned key he would also say that fortune eats her children
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young and slumped in the faceless hours of August heat I would prick my thumb & suck the blood out just to get closer than closeness to some feeling of being beloved in my own body instead of waiting for the stillness that only comes in turning dreams swallowing the spit as if it were the holy water it was and nothing was painful & everything was the sun too hot or too sharp angled at once the sapphire dusk draping its lace arias on fence posts the fields sown in secrets I felt I couldn’t possibly understand although I stared through the window at midnight eyes peeled like dry pears in winter barrels how simple to be locked in the drawer of devotion for years until it eventually opened and the raw desire to be monstrous in love emerged my blue muscles stamped with an emblem from each lonesome day I had buried my grace & then drowned excavating pulling out brick after brick of doubt and shame there was no hush and it was not like sleep it was like burning a match until your fingertip melts and runs to the grain that year night came when I ate the light that arrived at the end of the day until all I could see in the blue bite of air was the moon as it rose like a roan that had just slipped its bridle
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