sun(succumb)

Gabriella McField

after Sarah Lao, “Firelight.” 

you, scabbed with the breath of dawn, eyes still as empty rooms & the sun rising inside them. & here is where you first find fissures crawling from the soft folds of your body, light leaking out like sweat down to the parquet. dust motes laying claim to every sticky inch, & at first you do not tell me how the back of your throat burns sour, old spit or chemical, how you await a new haze for every morning sun. & how cold air smacks you sharp across the face each evening, world stung back into focus, & you scrabble hands over yourself, smoothing flesh, eyes frantic in searching--you do not tell me this, either. 

& so you are holy to me, still. & i want to be like you. give you my body & beg, slide your knife from neck to navel; suck my heart in through your teeth, refill my ribs with light. never mind that i’m only gurgling blood when i feel molten, hot iron, a distant sun. when finally i can touch you without singeing. never mind regret, when i know soon, the fates will swoop down from their shining reach of sky. & because we are only burning like we were always supposed to, when they look down upon this carnage, they will smile.

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Gabriella McField is in love with words and everything green, growing, and wild. Her work therefore often touches on the body or the wilderness is some way--you can read it in The Bitter Fruit Review and Velvet Fields, among others. When she's not writing poetry, she's working as the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Ogma Magazine. She tweets @parkmcfield.

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