We’ll get through this, someone says,
And even those who don’t say it believe it,
And I almost believe it too and also know
We don’t know what it means to go through. From a distance,
All slick and sheen. Right here, a matted mess
And sleek shivering. Something’s seeped
From a crack in earth’s crust, busted open
Off the coast of our existences. Something’s leaking.
Preening sludge is a colossal waste
Of ongoing as much as it is a measure of going on.
A feather might be mistaken:
Vane for obsidian blade.
The bird beaches to avoid drowning.
Its keel holds the heart with so many ways
To be wounded in the saving.
This poem first appeared in the anthology In the Tenpered Dark (Black Lawrence Press, 2024).
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Anna Leahy’s books include the poetry collection If in Some Cataclysm, What Happened Was:, and Constituents of Matter and the nonfiction book Tumor. Her essays have won top awards from Mississippi Review, Los Angeles Review, Ninth Letter, and Dogwood. She has been a fellow at MacDowell and the American Library in Paris. More at amleahy.com.
