wildscape. literary journal

Sprig
by Alicia Wright

Snagged in the thicket of a joyless summer: chill
of creek water, feathery bloom of scum widening
around my adolescent waist. The stinking mud, 

the sandy bank—mossed stones burrow deep
into the valleys of my spine, rivulet of crimson
threads its slow way knee-ward. This is the truth;

it is also the well, and all of it a void in the back-
woods of a public-school youth until it stumbles, 
halting, from the barrens of a smoke-fogged night

and I am pinned again to the table. There is violence
in it: needle-sting probing for yield, twilight a lead
quilt and I am split cold 

and cleaved wide open. Here you are webbed. 
Here you are woven taut. Here the delicate 
pink of you uncoils for the sun. 

The topography of the wound maps the pale ridge
of a hip: the ruptured grape and its sagging vine, 
the empty bowl of a softly cupped palm.

about the author // Alicia Wright

Alicia Wright (she/her) is a writer from Appalachia. She holds an MFA from Bowling Green State University and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Inflectionist Review, River and South Review, Eunoia Review, The Crawfish, Thimble, Kestrel, and elsewhere. She currently resides in West Virginia, where she runs an adult literacy program and leads the occasional community workshop.

Instagram: @ajwright304
Website: http://www.aliciawright.ink