where is it? the child
scrambles underneath
her skirt
& below the skin
of the city, subway trains rattle
tissue-blot faces in cells
white as cold milk
such color rushes up
to the wound, healing
the place where you were split
open, where two roads inched
away from each other, where
it leaked & the tissue tore
from sudden ocean
is it across that
bridge? the one she made
in kindergarten, fingers full
of paper cuts & inexperience,
the tiny stitch on widening mouth
or is it up there?
where they keep telling her
to go to see
to bind her arms
to find Him
to soak, to harden, to call it love
to measure the breadth of new
wing & sputter into the air
the child looks down
at arms tied & painted white
body, caterpillar
hair on unshaved shins &
home left behind like a cracked eggshell –
she needed to find it
press down into soil skin
soft for a new country, pick
into the brownness:
leave.
Artwork by Nada Krstajic, “Rainbow Cities – Crane”
