Emma Large

Non poet, you don’t know how

maddening it is to bring back

and back and 

back and back to

margin, when I want to keep my hand

where the blood is, where the throbbing starts,

the sunken place before words only the body knows.

Keep my palm to the membrane from which the heart

swells out like an embryo against its shell,

in that valley before feeling surfaces; remembering

the brown flagstones of your skin, warmed 

in afternoon sun. I unravel us like threads

to keep our mess in my pocket and to touch

their feathered ends, every now and then,

because sometimes I like missing things to

feel I am living,

to dredge last blood for sake of requiem;

though your skin before me now, I wouldn’t touch.

It occurs to me that even our elegy 

wasn’t written to mourn you. Sentiment

for sake of feeling, grieving the going 

over what is gone; how happy I am 

you do not know

all my little cruelties.