If I drink this whole river it will turn
to blue gossamer thread I can pull
through my belly. My body, feet up
from under the earth. I whisper
I miss you. I feel you in waves,
in the wetting and drying
of my skin. In the particles of air—
soft and winded and not quite
warm enough. I want to be a blanket
we can wrap our legs in. Burlap
shredded for nesting material.
If only we were birds. Not the flying kind,
the owl parrot that belonged to my father and lived
in the basement and laid too many eggs.
One day after school he told me
she had passed. I cried at the thought of it,
the giving and pushing of so much life
that it simply took her own.
Sarah Janczak studied at Sarah Lawrence College. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in inDigest Mag, The Boiler Journal, and EDGE.