I am open, in the field.
I offer the hail my belly,
a thinly lidded eye, a curve
of arched neck.
In the air, the trill
of a lark’s song, its voice—
a fountain, bubbles in darkness.
I wait for the sin. It’s coming.
I invited here a beast of wreckage,
this scythe of wind,
this belt of kindling.
I give instead my blood—
dark purple, blackberry wine,
a knife-blade of sugar.
The night air burns.
Over my wound, he pours
bottled sunlight.
He forgives me
with a lash of
feathered tongue.
I am reborn: A forest
of candlesticks,
a pillar for the moon.
—
Christine Nichols is from Stillwater, Oklahoma.
She has work pending or previously published in NEO’s Portmanteau, Intima, A Journal of Narrative Medicine, Muddy River Poetry Review, Red River Review, Vox Poetica, and Strong Verse.
