Content Warning: blood, bones, death

Saskia Nislow - were those deer bones in the river?

In the shadow of the stream

we rest

having shared of our meat

and needing less space now

Silt pools in the toothless

pits of our jaw

which once thrust forward to

lap at these waters

(or waters like these)

and it surrounds us too

and it of us

and so we are embraced by our

own missing skin

and in that way we are the same as

before

Like when we carried our body

(which was so heavy)

to the edge of this stream

stepped in

and the water was cool against our

terrible hot blood

but ran just as quick

And when our foot caught we

struggled for a moment

against an old fear

before kneeling to the

river’s stone gums

like a child curling against its mother

And there

dehiscent

opened along the seam that stitched us to each other

We hadn’t known it was there

that we were meant to become

as we are now

something boundless

something less

we are

caught in the minnow’s eye

dancing gilded through halls of light with

the rest of the dead