Memento Mori
By Audrey Spina
The road sputters
with early salt.
Late October,
the leaves are
small churches
she is afraid
to walk in to.
A timid step –
the sound of crows
cracking branches
like slivered bones,
their broken promise,
the crocking call
of expiration.
Somewhere,
the plums are
fast asleep.
An amber dream
he promises her despite
all this death. A stone
belly that swells, a house
made of sticks but steady
enough for screams
of a kettle pot, hot steam
caught in the bathroom
ceiling, or lying languid
like fog in the bed
fractured by two skins.
In time, she won’t
remember. October
will appear like
a month with no
name, a church
when man finally
abandons his god,
that unsettled place
between smoke
and fire. She will
remember the clouds,
however, how they hung
so willingly that fall.
And the plums,
they knew the best
time to hide.
She will remember
their solidity, untethered
beings.
Audrey Spina holds a BA in Art History and English from Wheaton College, Massachusetts. She is currently a graduate assistant at Bridgewater State University, where she is a candidate for a Master of Arts in English this fall 2020. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Babe Lincoln, The Graduate Review, North Dakota Quarterly, and Another New Calligraphy’s Impossible Task. She is working on her first book of poetry, which focuses on gender and institutionalized power centralized through the museum.