By Luca Rudenstine

That summer, my mother pressed flowers
To draft eulogies while my great-aunt carved pill 

Bottles in the image of her patchwork throat.
This hurt her to swallow, but she still craved 

Cherries, taking them whole as if she too
Could become indigestible to the earth like 

How a seed is both a body and a confession.
In this way, death became more than it was 

Ever supposed to be, desperate meanings
Placed in the clasp of palms, my great-aunt afraid 

To exhale because it felt too much like letting
Go. Really, it wasn’t her weight that changed, 

It was the way her body stilled. Everything
Breaks that way, you know? My great-aunt said to 

Me the last time I saw her. I still recall how
She gripped her own wrist, nails leaving star 

Shaped imprints onto her skin in a shade so
Bright, it was almost reassuring. And yes, 

Indigestible in a way that can’t be forgotten.

Of a different tongue 

When I was 
still budding, 
all chubby cheeks and 
four-foot-four, 
my mother fed me 
stories like honey, 
pressed characters into 
my ears 
leaving them ringing. 
they lingered long after 
in the nooks and 
crannies 
waiting. 
someday 
i will be a mother 
birthing words and 
nursing them to epics. 
they will rush 
from my mouth 
reminiscent of tales 
told by my mother, 
her mother, all the 
mothers before them. 
and by then, 
i will have lost the 
remains of their language. it will have faded to 
a song of 
stuttered consonants and misshapen vowels and no matter how long i search, 
they’ll no longer 
be there. 
But today, 
I thumb through what’s left of my great-aunt 
searching for fragments that fell aw 

-ay
with her last breaths. Her words are tipping off the ledge 
that is my tongue, ready to fall. 

They do not.
will i ever stop grieving you? 

the truth is 
i don’t get to know the answer to that question 

the best i can do ~all i can do~ is receive each wave as it arises

‘ wave upon wave upon wave ‘ 

i have committed 

to ‘ this magical spiritual walking 
everywhere, anywhere ‘ 

each breath of mine lately ends with « amen » 

& so i won’t pretend 
that when i’m sitting quietly 
/ or looking up 
at whatever sky offers itself that day 
that im not praying 
to unnamed forces that knew how to love me 
long before i knew how to love myself 

i pray to offer myself to this life 
in all of its strangeness and extremes 
its inconveniences and monotony 
as well as its joys and its pleasures 

i want all of it. i want it all.