How You Died

The leather tethers kept loosening. I had to pull at them until they dug into your body binding you to a rocking cross. It was all for nothing you died snapping at unseen knives, arching up, bending time into frozen waves. You once said you were Irish/Scots, Appalachian. You called yourself: Applachan. Sinewy girl --- wiry poppy stems in you, and engine oil to soften tenacious roots. The fever racked you up. It shook your bones loose. It blossomed, pouring you out in thimbles of awareness. In those intervals, blue hills filled your eyes with summer rain. I would talk to you of Ireland. We went there on that last night. We made a hasty camp in the felled woods, the deep raw stumps were already greening. Then I watched, and kept watching as feeble death broke its teeth on your blood.