Stefanie Kirby
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Ruptures
​
Begin with the end:
                                   my body
carries you still, like a reliquary
holds death skin to skin, cradles
everything
                     built of bones. Another
end where insides
                                  spill onto a lap:
the twist of rib cage, a pelvis
flexed to concavity. Spineless,
sand gathers into hills,
                                        into bellies
that line ocean floors & cover
themselves with seagrass tongues.
Taste salt.
                   Blood. An octopus will beat
herself against rocks, consume
her own tentacles after
                                          birth. This feels
familiar: to become consumable, a body
in violent
                 decline. A reliquary knows
the unreliability of soft tissue, a matter
of decomposition time.
                                          Begin
in the architecture of a wound like that
of a shrine, of shelter:
                                       fleeting.

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Stefanie Kirby is a Pushcart nominated poet residing along Colorado’s front range. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Passages North, Portland Review, Clockhouse, Rust+Moth, DIALOGIST, and elsewhere.