And now you are the beginning of your own history-- a stone rolled away, faint light casting you into
the world. One day you will be unburied. One day I will wear you across my chest while you finger my necklace,
my hair. Each of our hearts a shadow of the other. O my little letter, my alphabet of cells, do not set the stone back.
I watch you try your gospel inside me --
a fist that opens, then shuts.
-- Amanda Auchter is the author of The Wishing Tomb, winner of the 2013 PEN Center USA Literary Award for Poetry and the 2012 Perugia Press Book Award, and The Glass Crib, winner of the 2010 Zone 3 Press First Book Award for Poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming at The Huffington Post, CNN, American Poetry Review, Crab Creek Review, North American Review, Shenandoah, The Indianapolis Review, Tahoma Review, and the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day Project, among others. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Bennington College. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter: @ALAuchter.