Month: August 2022

I lay down
by the rocks of the cairn
and loved the blood in my wrists
and the water
the salt on my skin

This body is an altar
our body is an altar
Am I the dirt?
Or am I her daughter?

I ask the
summoning
thunder
to eat me
chew me up like clay and berries
spit me like pips
Starlings from a storm cloud
Stars in a coal pit
and
from the menacing split
the seams
between what is
and what isn’t
Let me root
deeper than indifference

I’ll
thrive in those faultlines
exiled
goathorns
blackthorns
and a cornucopia of
the prim-est roses
crowning a queen of
gentiles

If it means that the girl child
gets to stay a child
longer than I did.
If mean that sons get to rise
higher than the price on their life is
If it means the wild stays unbridled
and spared weitiko violence.

If it means that you’ll learn how to respect her
I’ll sing a siren song of a selky spectre
spitting fishbones
and fears
I’ll string along the threads of truth
stitching thistles
twitching ears

If it purify the colonised bodies and minds
I’ll flint the fire
and fold the willow into a basket weave
hidden under hides
and sweat out every tear denied
and every stolen grief.

If it emancipates
from the pain we recreate
I’ll get over myself
and make space for the voices of the villians
and listen to the illness
until I hear the medicine within it.

You see to heal the rapist, the racist, the haters, the hopeless
We need to dry the leaves, brew the teas, steep the tinctures, chew the poultice
We need to slow down and listen to the silenced heart until it’s no longer voiceless.

We don’t need more shame, more blame, more hurt, more hatred.
We need more home, more known, more care, more kindred.
You cannot heal the parts of yourself that you have discarded
And those who live denied are the ones who suffer hardest.

We are all the colonised and coloniser,
The dehumanised and the life denier
We are all heretic and fundamental
naive yet instrumental.

Scared and scarred and sacred.
So lie down by the cairn
and let the earth be naked.

Our bodies are an altar
Our bodies are an altar
We are all born of wind,
and soil,
and stars,
and water.