The Bruise

Published in North Carolina-based journal Snapdragon.
This poem previously appeared in Visual Arts Collective’s journal All Roads Will Lead You Home.

it wouldn’t have been
summer without the forest fires
they brought daytime and night
at once

the dirt was red here; the bruise
between my thighs—

purple now. darker than the smoke and
larger than the mountains.

my freshwater
spring cried itself to sleep, coated
in the lingering soot and you—

you buckled
under the heat. something in you had
melted and slipped away; you
i have long since forgotten

i remember the bruise though; the thud of the fall
and the long walk home. drinking the
remains of the icepacks
in direct sunlight—
the migraines and the mosquitoes; the sand

under my fingernails and the sweet juice
of the oranges dangling
over the neighbour’s fence; how the
flies were drawn to

the rind as it lay rotting on the tiles in the moonlight—
and the sound of the crickets
crunching like the dead grass under 
my feet; waiting for something to
interrupt the night.

Snapdragon is an international literary journal, and Virtual Arts Collective is a Chicago-based publisher of poetry.