I walk to clear my head.
There are no angels living under
the freeway overpass, no colors
where you are from, your brain
a jumble of neurons,
stretched and hiccupping.
Soon snow will come, fill
the negative space of your body’s
landing, erase all evidence
that once you painted a blank
canvas with your fear
unbuttoned. I have carried you
like a stone inside hope-emptied
pockets, like shame, like a word
I could not say out loud.
Now a voice, less heard than felt,
hallows my deepest parts,
opens me like a Bible.
Oh, Mama, can you picture it?
Me on my knees, the moon
in a mad orange flare.
Copyright © 2020 by Kari Gunter-Seymour. This poem originally appeared in Still: The Journal, Fall 2020. Used with permission of the author.