Emily Kendal Frey

IT DID NOT LOSE ITSELF PROPERLY

 
Arguably I am less microscope, than, say, two to ten years ago,

When my insides cupped and emptied, and emptied,

Until the mirrored bottom of my mind dried, exposed to the gods and goddesses

Who shot me with arrows then flayed me, kept the molasses brown meat,

Hung it, separated the dried sinews and wove a cape to be worn

By the sky herself. What I once was is now keeping the sky together

And from my eyes there can be no repaired vision, no adjustment back to focus--

The deer is always disappearing now into darkness.

When at night I take myself from the world

I first unburden the lime-crusted, you-salted, sugar-wet heart from its hiding place.

A heart would be better as a garnish but mine insists on keeping me as home

And so I allow it. I move it to the sky, to the iCloud of heaven. This is the bargain.

This is what I died for. To sleep without love in my body. To dream, unbothered by dream.

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Emily Kendal Frey lives in Portland, Oregon. She is the author of several chapbooks and chapbook collaborations, including Frances, Airport, Baguette, and The New Planet. The Grief Performance, her first full-length collection, won the Norma Farber First Book Award from The Poetry Society of America in 2012. Her second collection, Sorrow Arrow, was published in 2014 by Octopus Books.