salvage
I have learned to need the body
I spent years trying to rid the world of
have learned to cherish its pale rebel hymn
warped by ghost heat, carried, carried
by all my loyal dead. I have learned
to crawl backward into the wilderness
to ask, to eat, to steep in your gentleness.
Let this be where I permit forgiveness
to know your name, to leave our cruelest years
where & how we need them most—
behind & unlit.
Copyright Credit: Rachel McKibbens, "salvage" from blud. Copyright © 2017 by Rachel McKibbens. Reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.
Source: blud (2017)