Aging Sequence Number 9

I call for you when my stomach hurts I call for you when I cannot swallow I call for you from ghosted parts of my body that are disturbed in the performance of the smallest acts of mercy How you blew me around as browning wind sprinkling your seed, transporting dusty hells from far off wars over aspen forests that trembled and rustled in special attunement to your degraded touch You knocked my mind’s flesh into blossomed kill. Your abuse shielded your love that shielded your abuse under contract to survive. Your land was not my land, I grieved our severed skin We were squalling poplars pushed by winds not of our making. We smacked against each other, our needs like burning red leaves dropping to the ground, forfeited. Yet now I know something remained at the roots You inhabit my hands, the brown spotted skin that moves so loosely like a wizened rubber nipple Mother breeze, cradle the body of my thought. Obliterate the point. No illusion, no despair. Simply stop the racing forward to the point of vanishing when all I will do is mouth the gibberish tips of submarine longings, and toddle back and forth calling for you (c) Anita Lerek, 2019