Thanatopoiesis
P. Edda
We wake into a marble universe,
star-salt lingering in the morning air.
You listen for your father’s old green voice,
the velvet breath of grass and trees,
your mother’s champagne laughter.
My joints grow stiff with lithic rigor,
concrete pooling in my veins,
spine creaking as my shadow shivers.
You, who were born of a zephyr’s kiss
and smell of summer’s honeyed light,
have dreamt yourself out of the living world by chance.
But I have known since stone crows gathered at my cradle
that I would grow to be a haunted house.
This skin, these bones, were temporary fixtures.
You are a golden age, becoming.
I was always meant to carry ghosts inside me.
P. Edda is a wayward American living down under, where she spends her days studying law and her nights trying to put words together with other words in hopes of making poetry happen. Her work has appeared in Lakeside Circus and Three Drops from a Cauldron, and she is a founder and editor at Twisted Moon Magazine. You can find her on Twitter as @p_edda.