We have drowned a father,
sepsis and I.
Deny someone water
and the body will find
disease to fill it with.
∴
It’s always the stomach,
bulbous and huge.
A cavern holding
what would take
cupped hands days to fill.
∴
The shifting pressure of palms.
Threadbare sheets.
Metal guardrails.
The way he cries to lick
his chapped lips like a dog.
∴
Either it is raining
or it is not raining.
His body rained.
Mine did not.
It is that simple.
∴
Sepsis.
Say it out loud.
Now say it underwater.
(It sounds the same).
∴
The body a condition of music.
∴
Violent contortions
constellate a father
into a symphonied darkness.
Sweat pools like a shadowed
moon, or just another bruise.
∴
(We are lost
and unable to keep
still).
∴
I wanted to hold his hand.
Imagine such a prayer.
The rejection of it all.
∴
Silence green, like the bloom
of mold.
∴
Condemnation
in memory loss,
ferocious sleep.
Name, erased.
Face, emptied.
Like watching a bird
dive below
the water, anticipation
in the breaking.
Sonya Lara
Sonya Lara is a biracial Mexican American writer. She received her BA in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her MFA in Poetry from Virginia Tech. Her work appeared or is forthcoming in Frontier, Shenandoah, Ninth Letter, AGNI, The Los Angeles Review, The Acentos Review, and elsewhere. She is currently the Wisconsin’s Own Library Residence Fellow. For more information, please visit sonyalara.com.
