sackcloth//the others
the people here all look
like glasses-on-the-floor lights
or when walking eyes-
shuttered to the bathroom,
my fingers hover
two inches right from the lightswitch—all new
moonness & sedation & the feeling from childhood
when my mother left me
nightlighted. only, these lights are embers
burning hot & hotter
& i cannot find you.
are you hiding
in the throb of orangeness
or burning, too? i cannot burn. i am
ash or brittle coal no longer
useful for this kind of heat. they burned the sackcloth
right off me, passed me from fire to fire, discarded
me in the yard where the dew cooled my cheeks &
you are not here & maybe even they are not here
but they are flaming
the house down, becoming a part of the ash where
you are not.
sackcloth// you are not in the cornfield, not in the house
i cannot flame this house down
more than already that simpering nymph my doppelganger:
all simmering yesterthoughts & spit
she split the birch to aid the pyre & now
enmassed in ember haloed
among the other orbs of faces
& faces
& faces i cannot find you
& cannot in the throb of orangeness
find your burning without my own
rolling flames ashing
to the grass where left to cool
i become part of the there
where you are not.
Marissa Bennett is an MFA candidate at The University of Alabama who has been published in Brainchild, Mangrove, and a few others. She is originally from rural Ohio and write about matriarchies, mental illness, rural life, industry, and inherited traumas.