Chelsea Dingman
Stillborn In the end, I don’t know the miles my bones will travel. A hollowness moves in me like water weathering a cave’s walls. As everything contracts and lets go. As it rains. I would’ve drank the debris, had I known. Had I been aware that I could swallow. We couldn’t bury her amid this thick season. This winged southern wind. Hallowed holes in the earth let water seep through, but I couldn’t give her back the months she breathed only fluids & feces. I couldn’t give her a god who let her breathe. I dreamt a bonfire, her body surrounded by feathers in a field. All these months. I knew she would end in flames, the raven’s claws of my heart.
Crab Orchard Review
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