Poetry by Amanda Crum : An Offering

An Offering

I wouldn’t like to think about how many moments
I’ve stolen from the future
and offered to the darkness
that dwells in my bones.
Here, have a bit of my blood,
I have no use for it anyway.
How many times have I thought of you,
some version of you,
infant or nearly grown,
young woman or almost-man?
I imagine your eyes
so like mine,
pale as a bowl of milk
at dusk,
hands your father gave you,
tempered and hungered.
I train my mind to move stealthy
around the memory of you
inside my rib cage,
a long-past ache
that never had a name;
I still labor to push you out,
to birth you from my body
and leave this tattered shell behind.
If I could,
I would roll you in ashes
and make a mold of plaster,
I would preserve you
like the ones
who never left
Pompeii
and let your bones
whisper their story
to those hills.

Amanda Crum is a writer and artist whose work has appeared in Barren Magazine, Eastern Iowa Review, The Hellebore, The Dark Sire, and more. She’s the author of Tall Grass and The Day You Learned To Swim, both of which made the shortlist for Bram Stoker Award nominations. Amanda lives in Kentucky with her husband and two children.

Twitter: @MandyGCrum

feature photo by Matthew Fassnacht