October 2023 | poetry, Pushcart nominee
I.
Honeyed mystery of mahogany,
oak, walnut, teak, Fall’s tawny
offerings sanded into curves,
smooth invitation to touch,
like the sun-warmed thigh
& rising hip of that sunbaked
young woman you once were,
drowsing on a black sand beach
in Santorini, water beading
on your belly.
II.
This box hides your secrets:
How did you get from there to here?
What bodies? What lies?
The stolen quarters/kisses,
the unmade bed, the 6 a.m. departure.
What did you know & when?
III.
After you’ve been unmade,
can you learn trust like fitting
pieces of different puzzles
together? Remember how
they returned your uterus
to its wet cave after the knife
discharged its shrieking cargo?
IV.
How do you birth yourself
into a new name, receive
the gift of it in another’s mouth,
let it melt onto another’s tongue
like Amaro—bitter/sweet & smoky,
let that same tongue undress
your inhibitions, rendering
skin & sinew, splaying bones,
exposing the last hidden chamber?
V.
Is it too much—
all this allowing?
How your ribcage’s rusty hinges
once oiled with clamor and hush
swung wider and wider in desire.
VI.
Were you too much, wearing
your need like drought?
How he slipped away
in millimeters of silence,
disappearing even as he stood
before you—naked, dripping,
cowed.
VII.
Your blind fingers stagger
around the subtle lynchpin.
Had we arrived at the end
of each other? Or could a box
be a road to reunion?
VIII.
Relax. Let surrender carve
a door to a new dimension. Step
through. Let his arms curve
around you. Let his elegant hands
reveal what was jigsawed shut:
a lacuna large enough
for hope.
Elya Braden
Elya Braden is a writer and mixed-media artist living in Ventura County, CA, and is an editor for Gyroscope Review. She is the author of the chapbooks Open The Fist (2020) and The Sight of Invisible Longing, a semi-finalist in Finishing Line Press’s New Women’s Voices Competition (March 2023). Her work has been published in Anti-Heroin Chic, Prometheus Dreaming, Rattle Poets Respond, Sequestrum, Sheila-Na-Gig Online, The Louisville Review, and elsewhere. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets. www.elyabraden.com.
