Fire Season
We sip your bones through our lips mouth breathing
We take our Eucharist through the lungs these days
Your body and your blood
Suffered by a fire impossible to conceive
You rolled into yourself
Spine skin fur hoof claw
Fingernails teeth eyelashes
A memory of being a cub with other cubs
In a burrow last spring
Or dropped from womb to ground splat
On spindly legs that were solid once the blood flowed
Or wings that finally feathered and flew
Or emerged from a chrysalis withered and shrunk until they bloomed
Or of a child’s hand in yours
Your child’s hand
Your child’s heartbeat
I tasted them all in the back of my throat
My own lungs grieving for yours that I was breathing,
