Two poems // Sarah Certa

On the Other Side of Living

It’s raining and I miss paying attention

to the trees in my throat, the skin

stretched across my hips, all the mornings

we meant to give birth to. It’s strange,

to be here again, talking to a self I was sure

I had buried. She just

won’t leave me alone. God,

I mean. I mean I’m not going to die.

What is there to bury when I

have only ever been born? What is there to mourn

when we have only ever been love?

Though it’s true I’ve been running, hooking

my ribs onto the undersides of spaceships,

slipping away between dimensions

only to find myself in the faces

of angels, my fractured mind snapped whole

in the wake of solar storms. I am

the Earth’s identity crisis, the sky

that hugs her anyway. I move

like lightning and then wonder

where all this ash comes from, why I can’t remember

ever being held as something more than a corpse.

All these stories we invent about ourselves

to keep from feeling worthy

of speaking to each other. How every word

has been both a map toward home and a wall

on the other side of living.

Pulse

I used to be a natural at mapping out my organs,

the seaweed in my veins, the metal taste of my tongue

pushed against the back of my teeth

when I ran out of ways to stop looking at you.

Where did I come from and why

is a question I used to curl up inside of

as I waited for the door in my throat

to break itself open, the daily

chore of being born. It was easy

with you. That’s what I remember most,

the breathing. The wanting to. The stop

and go of your pulse

against every barricade I’d built

around my life. You screamed

as if we were dying,

and I believe it now, all the skin

we left behind. No time

for a proper funeral when the whole world

is burning up at your heels. No time

to say good-bye when we never

got the chance to say hello. No need

to say hello when it’s home

you’re walking into. But still,

I’d like to start at the beginning, glance backwards

over my left shoulder and ease

into your vision like a cloud.

I want to make eye contact and mean it.

I want to fall from the stars back into my body

and make mornings happen

the way the sun does: steadily and only

because you exist to wake.

//

Sarah Certa is a spiritual counselor & psychic channel, dedicated to providing an evolving quantum-spiritual framework through which we can more holistically understand the human psyche & dimensions of consciousness. University of Hell Press published her first book of poems Nothing to Do with Me in 2015. Her second book of poetry is forthcoming from Civil Coping Mechanisms in 2017. Follow her on Twitter @AlienHere2Love.