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.