by Natalie Martell

April 2020

unable to sleep, i stare at blue light
late into the night—death tolls, ransacked shelves,
bleeding maps. poison, but also remedy—
abby’s message about violets & morels in her yard,
your photo of a home altar: red cloth
holding oak cross, water & flame, dried lavender,
cedar, a rosary of small moons. i think of your craving
for touch & ask the moonlight to brush fingers
through your hair in seattle. soak you in glowing
until you drip with it. somehow, mom, the days keep
breaking. spring is a myth every year
until it unfurls. still, my body is a molting tree—
at the slightest wind i flake shards of myself
to the dirt, falling a hundred times over. instead of working,
i read about microbial life surviving in frozen lava
beneath the ocean floor. inside microscopic fissures
& the pressure of atmospheres, the cells shiver,
alive. i gaze at van gogh paintings
on the met website. the full image shows a fused
landscape, but mom, in the close-ups, the scene
shatters. iridescent movement blooms in wet ribbons,
writhing like fish. i can witness each reckless flight
of the artist’s hand, rendering cypress & wheat
from tangled ochre, titanium, ultramarine. all is illuminated:
the anguish of his gestures, the quivering gashes of darkness
where time has fractured the strokes. why does beauty
make me ache? the brushstrokes sing & grate
against my bones. mom, i saw your bird again
today. i believe you sent it from cherry-blossomed streets
lined with boarded-up windows. on a branch outside
my room, a black-capped chickadee’s two-note song
bends down as though to mourn, as though in prayer.

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Natalie Martell is a queer writer living in southern Minnesota and working with adults with different abilities. She received my MFA from Minnesota State University, Mankato. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Salt Hill, Flyway, and elsewhere.