Reminders After Survival

A poem.

Illustration by Madeleine Jubilee Saito

Remember; when the thickness
curled around you, when it was
thorns and clouded venom in your
mind, your own soul cutting you,
when it was kindness at the
root that pulled you into ground,
when the air vanished and you
choked on nothing, thinned
away, dust and web, not by
choice, not by choice, in your utter
moonlessness, when your shattering was silent as
grass in the blank spring wind, when
the awful bright of it was enough to swallow
you whole, no bone of you left to spit up,
your mere gristle changed and mossed
over and sundried, unwitnessed brutality
piercing through you like a river; remember
your soul; like earthy glass, remember how darksome
it shines, like flight unimpeded,
remember how your chest loosens from
the chill of being alive, here, and beautiful
(faithing), ceaselessly beautiful, no one
alive who can take from you your goodness;

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