ReCreation—Alba Sarria

My garden is full of weeping, 
my skies are starless. 

Nightly, girls trench my flowerbeds 
gasping 
“Is that my lung? Is that your heart?” 

Come dawn I wash their blood off 
the cobalt stepping stones overrun 
with weeds while fleet-footed foxes 
pick their bones clean. 
Through the open window She sings, satisfied.
Two new sprouts have come out of the ground today
baring used teeth riddled 
in cavities. 

In the kitchen a being with too many eyes
too many faces—teeth 
flips flapjacks. 
Window open, 
She sings “beloved belated 
the ‘our ends 
draped o’er weary women 
baring bristled broches.”
I come inside and kiss 
her bruised bloody mouths, 
relentless, 
until the songbirds crawl out of the cellar
ready to hunt anew. 

Yesterday She and I went berry picking.
I swallowed sticky berries that 
fizzed as they crumbled 
under my sharp teeth 
and She sang about the end again; 
the six black wren wings growing 
out of her battered thorn-encircled head
twitching in glee. 
The world is full of so much color 
and half of it lives within her ten 
too many fingers.
Tonight, more girls will come 
tilling for the tactile taste 
of their bodies, 
and beloved-of-mine will have Her fill 
and I will lay in bed, 
pretending to sleep while lights whirl overhead,
heralding 
in violent streaks of coppery-green. 
Invisible trumpets will raise the dead 
and leave them battered, begging on my chalky
salty doorstep. 
All the while the little girls will whisper, witless
blind witnesses “is that my lung? Is that your liver?”
And my beloved—my beloved will tred
and tear 
flesh from bone, precariously burying 
their tiny teeth for tasteful tea leaves. 

“What’s it like 
to live in your body?”
It’s night. I stand in the kitchen 
alone. 
The girls are screaming and the day 
seems so far away. 
Where has the time gone? 
Why has it always gone? 
My shadow is in the doorway, carefully
out of the casted copper-green glow 
I bathe in, 
scorch in. 
Distant drumbeats push a creek’s dark flow
to the backdoor, lapping 
licking the melting walls clean. 
I sound so much like a boy. 
I could of sworn I was– 
but maybe he–me–is a reminiscent 
of the boys fertilizing my fields, 
who’s jaws and throat apples I found 
with fonding 
and added to my form. 

“Like an invisible museum,”
I whisper “you could fill rooms 
with all my stories–my bodies. 
You could hang me upside down and
unroll my details 
drop by drop. 
Nail by nail. 
The morning 
The night 
The end; 
each flaked flesh a world. 
I birth recreation, 
team with it. 
And She drags in the mixing parts
strip by fleshy strip 
to decompose decompress
deatomaize under my palms.”

photo by Karolina Grabowska (via pexels)