You know from the floorboards that you are in a forgotten city. I open my mouth and the church windows loosen. Yield. Undress themselves. I am not to blame for what has happened. Neither is he. Though last night I had trouble sleeping.
The last time I turned my body under his, everything whitened. The books on the nightstand silent.
I’ve spent four years thinking it is him I belong to.
Wet. Ripe as an orange. Always thinking myself an empty bowl.
This body is still mine. Salted by the past. Anchored. And yet there is no need. The sea has all but been drained of its water. It groans nothing more than the sea on a map. Shadow-gods.
Ann Pedone graduated from Bard College with a degree in English Literature and has a Master’s Degree in Chinese Language and Literature from UC Berkeley. Ann is the author of the chapbooks The Bird Happened (Leave Books), perhaps there is a sky we don’t know: a re-imagining of sappho. (Cup and Dagger Press) as well as the forthcoming DREAM/WORK and Everywhere You Put Your Mouth (Halas Press.) Her work has recently appeared in multiple journals including Narrative Magazine, Abralemin, Slant, Contemporary Verse 2, The Phare, West Trade Review, The Open Page Literary Journal, The French Literary Review, SAND, and The Shore.
