after Gertrude Abercrombie
A bottle to the sea, a ladder to the sky. Those slim rungs won’t hold you, that sliver of moon will slice in two the hand it hooks. You can swim with the gulls and hide from the owls, you can tell all of your stories to the pale cat who follows. But you can’t see yourself in the mirror in the dark or breathe under water. Your scroll won’t be found until you have turned into seaweed and shells. You will return as a drowned horse or a woman who points at windows and doors. You will forget everything but the quickening branches, jittery, frail, shaking their fists at the moon.
