Last night I woke a fever, 2 a.m., I worried how
to tell you what I can and can’t consume.
My stomach turns me. If I write for forty days

and forty nights, will I get to the bottom of me,
a lake drained of its drink, a fish white-lipped
there, gasping? Outside of my window and even

at nighttide the azaleas slouch, indecent, fawning off
their fuchsia threads against a broad swath of gray.
In the dark I am invisible like a loom of stripped wires

sparking behind a wall. I have nothing more to say
to you because I have no you to say a thing to. A warped
reel of birdsong whirls up my throat. By this age I wanted

to know the body as an object exquisite, jewel-cut
and gold-set, a beautiful treasure beneath smooth hair.
Now I am a table saw trying to be elegant, trying to know

the world by dividing it, piece by piece. At night I lay down
in the long bed and shiver up to the wild profusion
of my own hair. Into the dark I set loose a flock

of syllables. I watch every word’s winging, bright-
beaked, luminous. I should’ve clipped them gone.
 

—Emma Bolden

Poet’s Website, Instagram, Bluesky

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