by Kari Flickinger
Vestiary
who’d have imagined these flaky fingers clawing beneath air,
peeling the soft, tender vestiary of flesh from bones & finding loneliness
where two hearts were Siamese? I have found a cave outside & within myself
wishing the darkness to depart — your shadow locked behind
bars of stalactites & stalagmites reminds me of the 12 year old boy who crawled
into an anthill / or Jonah stubborn as fishbone in the belly of a whale. well,
other times I see you coursing back & forth through your mother’s grave
role-playing as the doctor who might have redeemed her from fanning the embers
of cancer’s greed. are you out of your mind? you yelled God
& all those years, cities apart, playing dead whenever she called, couldn’t convince him
you weren’t crying wolf. who am I to judge? this body of river where innocence comes to drown.
that hot February night, we waxed into oceans, my legs separate bays reaching
for the shores of sky. I felt the hair-raising, chest-aching possession in my womb, shifting
everything in its path, stirring butterflies like leaves in a tornado. she’d called
to tell you of the diagnosis; of loose clothing; of her body shrunk like an old mushroom
& as your body thundered between my hips, who could have heard
the damn phone / or guessed I would never see you again? return now, I’ll share the blame.
I see your voice in every vanity. I’m touching myself, opening up like a flower
rose flower, wet pink vanity — come again, inside me. my therapist says nothing is unsweepable
& I swear I’ve trashed those memories but they recycle back to me. my belly, a grave
of caterpillars tired of the doleful stretch of loneliness on this horizon. how much time
exits a wound before tendering it to healing? hate the way I remember you, running back
to her grave, humouring her ghosts with neon dazzling flowers — remember me here.
is it selfish of me, old love, to think that if I died you’d visit once again?
that you’d varnish my grave with roses, too?
Boloere Seibidor is an African writer, with works on numerous magazines/journals. Her work is largely inspired by music and art and all things beautiful, unnamed. Say hi on Twitter @BoloereSeibidor, where she fondly calls herself a black swan.
Kari Flickinger is the author of The Gull and the Bell Tower (Femme Salvé Books) and Ceiling Fan (forthcoming with Rare Swan Press). Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net. She is an alumna of UC Berkeley and a Poetry and Music Editor for Storyteller’s Refrain.