By Birdie Marie Rodriguez
She sailed away on the feathers of a heavenly thing that broke me.
Selah.
There is a wonder in the sorrow of death before birth— to be jealous of the angels, to shake a name from the Tree of Life that was never mine to begin with. The mourning river is in the wicker rocking chair, milk purged from breasts that don’t know any better.
This story weaves itself
through the history
of woman, and now I
am the thread looped
through the eye
of the needle, running
into and out and back
into its archaic fabric.
I never wanted this grief,
but it has its hooks in my
head, its thorns in my feet,
and I depend upon it,
even crave it—the peculiar
beast of it—holding and
keeping, tending
to her life
that billows forth
as but a memory
Selah.
Birdie Marie Rodriguez is an accomplished folk artist and an emerging poet. She has a passion for storytelling, and is inspired by history, theology, nature and family. She has been published in Prometheus Dreaming, Esthetic Apostle, and Ever Eden Literary Journal. She lives on the Coastal Plains of North Carolina with her husband and three children.
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