I Returned Your Chest
—Eartha Davis
I Returned Your Chest
& the small animal dreaming there. It was a transfer of forest, a willow stitch. Four
fingers on a breastbone. Blazing constellation. Let me sing for you, darling. The animal
inside: dreaming like the word over. Like slow-feeding rivers. Let me sing, darling, to the bird
on our tongue. Our salt is silent. Our palms: tethering touch to earth. Feet to feather. & we
speak, softly, of hand-feeding the meadows. Letting redwoods open us, speak to us.
Dandelion clocks descending on a Mountain breast. Wanting, you said, is reserved for
Mountain. Waiting, I say, is reserved for willow or greenwood. But what came first: wait
or weight? The beautiful in the breaking, or the breaking beautiful? Now: our eyes are foaming baskets. Our oceans: the sound the heart makes as she breathes. & the dusk yolks —
slow, yes, then fast — to remain a little in love, a little in loss.
Note: the line “hand-feeding the meadows” references Jaye Kranz’s poem "Your Inbox Is Too Much With Us".
About
EARTHA wishes to live gently by a river. She placed second in the 2022 Woorilla Poetry Prize Youth Section, was nominated for Best of the Net in 2023, and was shortlisted for the 2024 Creative Writing New Zealand’s Short Story Prize. Her work is published or forthcoming in Wildness, Rabbit, Frozen Sea, Minarets, Modron, Baby Teeth Journal, South Florida Poetry Journal, JMWW, LEON Literary Review, Arboreal Magazine, ELJ Editions, the Basilisk Tree, the Stirling Review, Where the Meadows Reside, the Spellbinder Magazine, the engineidling, Discretionary Love, Sour Cherry Magazine, Revolute, & Eunoia Review, among others. She honours her Ngāpuhi ancestors and the Wiradjuri people, on whose land she lives, breathes, and writes.