When the forensic nurse inspected me, she couldn’t see the tenderness he showed me after. My walk home squirmed sore with night. I passed the earthworms displaced to sidewalk, their bodies apostrophed in the sun. I did not anticipate a grief so small, my noun of a prayer, Eat dirt to make dirt. Took a man’s hand as he led me to cave. So long as I breathed, I could huff violets in his dank, practice earth’s gasp. Mother lifts daughter, daughter casts look at camera, a killer, a stick in the mud. I hold my own hand. When the forensic nurse inspected me, I described the house, historic blue. Asked me to push my hips down. Little crescent moons where his nails stabbed into me. She gave me the word abrasion so gently I offered consent. Blue as the moon when I sighed wait, blue as the no of my throat. Abrasion, possibly extended form of red. Harm results in a starry night too, many galaxies scraped under the nail of a heavenly body. Ah my second earth, its wounds hardened into swallowed prophylaxis, an injection pooling between muscle and skin. A woke seed. Deadarmed anti-moons aggregated. A storm can travel seeds up to 30 miles away. They dust on the sidewalks like lost data. He did not intend Did not. Bloody speculum a telescope searching the angry night sky for proof.
Crescent Moons~ Natalie Eilbert
