Yesterday, the final petal curled its soft lure into bone. The flowerhead shed clean, I gathered up your spine and built you on a dark day. You are still missing some parts. Each morning, I curl red psalms into the shells in your chest. I have buried each slow light: cardinal’s yolk, live seawater, my trenza, a piece of my son’s umbilical cord, and still you don’t return. A failure fragrant as magic. Ascend the spirit into the design. My particular chiron: the record that your perfect feet ever graced this earth. Homing signal adrift among stars, our tender impossible longing. What have I made of your sacrifice. This bone: it is myself.
Copyright © 2018 by Vanessa Angélica Villarreal. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 9, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.