grief card 47

---art and prompt by Asenath Lizárraga, Letting Go

The body has a life of its own.

See it drown

or suffocate, how the arms

flail,

swimming

upwards. I finally quit smoking

when I imagined drowning

in air, pulling

panicked and futile.

At first, the umbilical held.

Then, when I was let

from my mother, my body turned

on me. The pain petrified

and sunk me into the water,

no flower pleasure boating downstream,

no fresh spring twig a bird snapped

and dropped. I was let go

and down. And down

the stream, river water

from whence it came took

the plucked flower of me

outward bound

and stillbound.