Objection
Hybrid prose poem
How do you eat your mouth
my son asks at breakfast
Not sure but sometimes I do envision
engulfing my fist
when I’ve been deprived
of enough sustenance
My husband adds,
it’s possible to swallow your tongue
I then think how a knot forms in the throat and words choke behind the eyes. hardening. deadening
until decay takes up shelter in the chest. pounding. pounding and there is always unrest underneath the winter floor laced with leaves too stubborn to molder — harboring instead those blood-suckling ticks
— spiny legs crawling up
unsuspecting skin —
broken-off heads tunneling in
So how do you eat your mouth?
or should we ask instead
How do we keep the body from swallowing the whole?
deepening heels — burrowing in — where it’s slightly warmer than below freezing and we wait for death to come and bequeath the next offering of silence
Breathe & Be Still ©2024
