Destiny foregoing,
I suppose the unknown is a lonesome thing.
My hypothalamus sieves the relevant from the not,
and my bronchi siphon the distance from
my beginning to end. But—my larynx is not
like the inside of a raven. The lines in my palms
do not shift. All I know of the future, is I’m told
it is bright.
Time weighs two coins on my eyelids.
All of this skin, and I still bleed.
Light is born of something burning—while
the dark persists in and of itself. It
is where we all come from. It is where
our family still lives.
The Pleiades sing to me of their mother, of she
who bore them into existence to hide us from the place
where darkness lives.
I too am a mother. I have carried. And I have birthed.
I do not fear the dark.
I fear the end of darkness.
Billions of neurons, and I still cannot make fire.
My thorax is now like the inside of a raven.
The lines in my palm deepen.
Destiny and its coins aside, tomorrow
is a populous destination.
All day long I smell something burning.
There is no place we need hide.
— Cierra Lowe-Price, 2020