Say Yes

Say Yes

Meredith Heller ©2018

Published in Rebelle Society & Avocet in slightly different versioins

At midnight on Tuesday
her flower bloomed
beside the river
that pours in pulses of lace
through the eye holes
of the rock skulls
that rest their heads on the bank
to dream

She cracks and crumbles
into the murmur of water
that signs its name across her skin
devouring her edges
until even her essence dissolves

The granite boulders of her back
marbled with grief
break apart at the seams
scatter the water with sparks
from her veins

Say yes to an invitation from Hades
received in a handwritten scroll
tied with a white string
hidden in a rock crevice
and read one evening
as the moon sliced the sky

She remembers when kids played kickball
on the street behind her house
one humid summer night
when she stayed out late
with the boy who read a book
under the street lamp
while bats darted in and out
catching moths in their mouths

Language was a song she sang
while she rode her bike
up and down the hill
a melody tattooed its signature
across her shoulders
in notes she bent
on the lute of her ribs
her polkadot shirt unbuttoned
flying in the breeze behind her
her heart open to the sun

Resist resistance
she sings to herself
like a mantra

The supple sapling of her spine
rises toward the light
as she spins on a tilted axis
from gravity’s hip
The water takes and turns her
in its wise white hands
as she composts last year’s loss

In the morning
a velvet peach ripens in her throat
she warbles as she’s born
year after year
of dark nights
and bright noon-tides
the zippered pocket
of her being
open
and closes.