A Bedridden Lullaby
I am sinking swift as a canoe yearning for its belly to flop skywards
and drown itself in Easter pill piles and linen bandages and hour
second waits, aching for a bit taste of capillary crunching eat
and acrobatic feats like strolling and sitting and sleeping
through the night without my stiff mother coming in
and pestering me if I’d be alright Be you alright,
child? So sometimes I would pretend I’d be
out like a doorknob and dumb to all the
trembling of the trees letting go of
all their ashen leaves and quiet
like a shrew into winter I’d
go shine myself up as a
dime to roll my body
away into a dream
where nothing
here is the
same.
Then,
like a fine
dandelion kept
dead for too long
I burst slowly fragile
and clanking as if every
bone had forgot how to be a
bone how to be working late and
such so they need a good dusting like
shelves buried neath paper stacks for eons,
but, things are moving faster now as if I am in a
hurry to be a human being, grinning myself into fast
catch up and scarfing and running-running-running papa
say Oh my word you be a tiger! going beyond what you came from
and starving your lungs while whipping like a wild beetle in flour
springtime heat; and I got all the mouth to howl at the horizon all the
damn much that I want to howl at it. Everything, tastes. The being alfresco.
“A Bedridden Lullaby” first appeared in the When Time and Space Conspire anthology back in December 2016.
Renwick Berchild 