It Is Made of Broken Parts

You glimpsed it
from the corner of your eye,
a creature sewn
from scraps of shadow.
You saw it in a parking lot
one midnight after your shift,
so exhausted
walking felt like falling.
You made it up,
or your brain made it,
a headache, an aura
of sparkling lights, a breach
in imagination’s rocky wall.
You wake from a dream
of a lost book
and all day you search,
not remembering what
it is that you search for.
Or you remember the word itself,
re-member.
Here is the quilt to throw over
your visions. Here,
the body the undertaker
stitches together.

*

Bethany Reid has four books of poems, including Sparrow, which won the 2012 Gell Poetry Prize. Her poems, essays, and short stories have recently appeared in Kithe, Passengers, Persimmon Tree, Constellations, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, The Thing with Feathers, was published in 2020 as part of Triple No. 10 by Ravenna Press. http://www.bethanyareid.com