by Elisabeth Adwin Edwards

Call me Stellar Demise, my hemoglobin pulses with the last exhalations

of stars. I have cast myself

into a cup, a scaffold, a fence, a pipe, a cup. That which is foundational,

marks the edge of a loving space, or fills

to overflowing, that which can be used as weapon, but more often

the thing that spills

over. Well-seasoned skillet, molasses, rust. Some days I’m so hard, heavy. Others,

so magnetic I can't move. I have carried water

no one would want to drink, water not fit for a child to bathe in. Cells of the fetus

I aborted at age twenty-one

bored through the blood-brain barrier and his tiny double-helixes corkscrewed

my mind. He still courses

through me. I imagine his eyes the color of black ore, like his father's. Sometimes

I dream him into a strong body, a body

outside of myself, a body I can touch, and I become a spigot, all I do is weep.

Another star died and found its way here.

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After a successful 20-year career as a regional theater actor, Elisabeth Adwin Edwards has shifted her focus to poetry; her work has appeared in Rogue Agent, ASKEW, Serving House, Melancholy Hyperbole, Menacing Hedge, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and other publications. Her chapbook, The Way I Learn To Take It Like A Girl, won the 2018 These Fragile Lilacs Chapbook Contest (judged by William Fargason). She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter.