A Song for July

by Michael John Abela

My maker I wept on your feet,

I shattered vast in the coldness

Of your sole; in the gelid flat of your

belly where I was once blood-warm.

I reconciled with your palms like the blasted

white trees to winter. I traced with your careful

breaths, if there is any. You're glowing silver:

Retracting color, paler, held by a broken humor,

O satin saint, paint plowed in the bent of her

earthly heart, I flayed stark in the absence of

a delicate hand. No more soothing of backs.

No more sauntering on plain rocks.

Go empty this poultice, the marks are here. I

hooked myself in the fissure of frayed fabric;

To keep her bones not still. To pour everything

in a cup, in the blackness of a stirred coffee—

I barely know my femur anymore. I curled

my insides into a box just as you laid flat.

I rested in the rest of your heart, teeth-hard

and rumbling of peace of your mortality.