Stooped

There is a carcass on the corner. I keep it in mind, watching for the beginning of a carrion feast that never comes. I’m waiting for vultures to land, to hobble their hunched poses around the dead thing that waits for them. I watch the tree line, the sky, the road winding away like entrails, but the vultures don’t come. I spend a hot fall day that feels too much like summer sweltering in the sun, toiling away at the vines and wild grass, slicing open skin on the barbed fingers of rose brambles. Rain has seeped into the yard from the night before and the warmth of the day is leeching it back to the sky, leaving air too sticky to breathe and a smell of dirt at the edge of too hot and freshly wet. I bend and stoop, aching in the confines of my skin, my rattled cage of bones that have crumbled and warped with time. I think of my mother, her hands cracked and black with dirt in a distant summer. If you don’t stand up straight, you’ll grow a hump. You’ll spend your life crooked and bent. I think of her face, haggard and sharp in the glinting light of memory. I think of the way a vulture continues to feed its young, even after the chick has learned to fly. I spread my arms beneath the rays of the sun, straighten my back, and burst into feathered flight. I float on an updraft, keenly seeing for the first time in my life instead of just keenly feeling. I spot the carcass on the corner. I feel a hunger in my hollow bones, a sureness in my stooped, bent back.

L.M. Cole is a poet and artist residing in North Carolina. She is the co-editor of Bulb Culture Collective and her work has appeared or is forthcoming with The Pinch Journal, The McNeese Review, Stanchion and others. For more information visit https://linktr.ee/lmcole

Published October 15 2024