[Our bones lie together, all hollow] & other poems
[Our bones lie together, all hollow]
Our bones lie together, all hollow.
Another sky can be found there.
Sleeping, our thoughts write themselves
on the walls, the color of pearl. Moments
pass through, like incense curved in the dark,
on their way to where words go
after they’re spoken. Whatever it is that touches us
comes from there: behind the spider web’s
silent call. How I love this time.
We are sewn
to the seamless air, and rising, the silk
of our nerves, an inscription of heat.
[We held off the tree line]
We held off the tree line
as long as we could—
the grayscale sun, the closeness
of falcons and bog. Then
you remembered: a door
arose, a crosshatch of brush
turned to rafters—
a ceiling of sunbeams,
spores, and ash. Lichens had eaten
their way through the walls,
and everything owned was gone.
As the forest pressed hard
into loadbearing beams,
I pleaded to know: where is
our escape—from shadows
of plant-life grown into
your mind, from yellow-gray
light become bleached?
(after a photograph by Suzanne Simmons)
[After dreaming of sun, I woke up/ with burned skin]
After dreaming of sun, I woke up
with burned skin—a component part
of nightmare. I tried to let the bees
breathe for me, for the parts of the skin
the light goes through. But the corners
of sky breathe deepest. One of their jobs
is causing time to pass. If every dahlia
has multiple lovers, who says I don’t
need healing? I wasn’t touched—
except inside the stem.
[We pose together, an untaken picture]
We pose together, an untaken picture,
while beaches drag out the sunset
as long as they can. The days are bolted down—
and the seasons. In March I begin to ration you.
I already remember missing you. I translate
your breath into words I can read in the dark.
They become what my eyelids tell me.
At breakfast, our vision crosses paths,
beginning to whiten. The garden is full
of peonies—and other cores that break open.
Our minds grow so wide they are blank.
[The water thins—our shower]
The water thins—our shower
interrupted. Worry tends to bend
in time, like light. The cats begin to purr,
assuming heat, the sheets unstir.
Recognizing dust collects
even in a closed space, a flower bloom erupts
out in the yard. Our ears so close (I think I hear)
your cilia in wind—even as
my eyesight dims (a sound like grass):
the room takes flight— our minds unburn
—the aura of the house returns.
Kimberly Kralowec is the author of a chapbook, We Retreat into the Stillness of Our Own Bones (Tolsun Books, forthcoming May 2022). Her poems have appeared in journals such as The Inflectionist Review, The Night Heron Barks, High Shelf, Star 82 Review and Birdland. A lawyer by profession, she holds an English degree from Pomona College in Claremont, California and lives in San Francisco. Her poetry blog is anapoetics.com.