Gabriela Halas
There was a day when I spoke
to your face & it stayed dark
because it was dark.
Not this technological gleam
that partitions you. Trades one corner
of sacred ground
for the other.
The soft continents of baby’s
skull, still
split, was tended by oiled silk
sheared from life
—the bleating in living throats—
The sound could have been a warning call.
What now covers her skull
arrives from the drill,
the revenue of war,
unearthed as ink. Drape the slick
mess, watch it stain her new flesh.
There was a day when fresh cut
flowers came from the garden
or not at all.
Their heads drooped as the sun did
behind layers &
layers
of horizon.
In earth’s cool sanctuary
a watercolor caress on the skin
of all things
—the secret blood
in a bulk of beets lasted—
until they did not.
And so, you bring flowers. Offer color
as seasons remain unsure of themselves.
I bite the globe-toned fruit
offered by your hand, tended magic of chemistry.
I am grateful for the memory of flesh,
peel of the once living
from the dead.
♦♦♦
Gabriela Halas (she/her) immigrated to Canada during the early 1980s, grew up in northern Alberta, lived in Alaska for seven years, and currently resides in B.C. She has published poetry in a variety of literary journals including About Place Journal, Prairie Fire, december magazine, Rock & Sling, The Louisville Review, The Hopper, Gingerbread House Literary Magazine, among others; fiction in The Hopper, subTerrain and Broken Pencil; nonfiction in untethered magazine, Grain, Pilgrimage, and High Country News. She has received two Best of the Net nominations in poetry (2020). She lives and writes on traditional Ktunaxa Nation land.