Tag: second person

Until you’ve slept on river rocks alone

Or worn a dying shroud of ants like lace

You’ve loosed your cold water skin from the bone

Clutched your self closed curled down, chanting grace

To the ancestors in your wounds who drink

The screams of nations for their strength, wipe the

Red from your mouth like a honeybee, gorged

On the ember of the salt and burn.

But a flick,

And their drums clamoring up,

Ashes to ancestry

Descendants to dust.