JILL KITCHEN
salt lines
did you know that CPR hurts? well not until later, not until the living.
but isn’t a star of muscle pulled taught & twinging in the night worth it?
to be alive to be of breath of the always beating hearts even when
your body is unable to move something in you keeps on moving
despite tragedies that unravel around you those unmasked as predators
devouring women devouring children devastating this earth that spins &
spins against starlight those stars that shine only when you look slightly
to the left or right of them but disappear when you stare straight at them
if you could collect your life into the salt lines of your palm what would you
reach for what would you choose as what was worth it? the squeal song laugh
of your children when they were small? that melody that lifted your battered
heart back into sky into longing? a september night on a brooklyn rooftop
while cars honked & sirens sang beneath you the tar at your feet warm as summer
cold bottle glass in hand, your knee leaning against the touch of someone else’s
when the only destination was the moment you were in & for once
you didn’t want to imagine another
Jill Kitchen‘s work appears or is forthcoming in Ecotone, FERAL, HAD, The Iowa Review, The Night Heron Barks, Parentheses Journal, The Penn Review, Pidgeonholes, Poet Lore, Radar Poetry, The Shore, Tahoma Literary Review, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Whale Road Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Boulder, Colorado where she can be found rollerskating on the creek path searching for great horned owls. Twitter: @jillkitchen Instagram: @msjillkitchen Website: https://linktr.ee/jillkitchen