wildscape. literary journal

Instead
by Mark Dunbar

You weren’t even going to have a service,
but here you are—flatstale in the pew, 
a scale model of yourself beneath stained glass
and the rising hymns  
and the minister going on about seasons,
no mention of the bona fide wasting one
that she stumbled into just as you
emerged to bleed her,
the skip-stop queen who skipped you clean
with her mothering, seasoned you
in wind chill—locked you out
in the drifts because you wouldn’t
drink your milk, who let you bleed
as a lesson about safety and knives,
her quick fists and the flipside 
you came to savor, the indifference.

So many words but not here.
So much that hibernates.
Send the grandkids up to speak
of the stranger who mocked you
with homemade Halloween costumes,
trips to the zoo and her gingerbread—
that picture instead,
that asylum,
that hull they drag over you
and put to sea.

about the author // Mark Dunbar