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Delphine

Poetry by Melissa Strilecki
After Tarfia Faizullah
 
 
Quiet daughter,
 

                                          named for the blue flowers,
                                          dolphins in the dark sea,
 
blood of our blood,
                 
                                          how soon does blood flow? Think:
                                          when we saw it, she was so still.
 
flesh of our flesh,
                 
                                          this being wrought from the weaving
                                          of bodies, bound in a parcel
 
you came to me
 
                                          of ancestral codes. I held the spring-
                                          ling gently in my teeth and
 
in the blessed blue
–
 
                                          we drifted nearly weightless,
                                          joyous and naive to both
 
sacred and profane
–
 
                                          dark and glistening matter, ha
–
                                          which one is which—no matter;
 
and left a desert where
     
                                          the wounds of the world find
                                          their inevitable source. Daughter,
     
we had to carve out
 
                                          with our teeth, with bare pauper's
                                          hands, we scooped and contorted,
 
even that last bit
 
                                          with strained wrists in blighted earth,
                                          bent in supplication and dreaming
 
of water.


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Melissa Strilecki

Melissa Strilecki has work recently published or forthcoming in The Shore, Volume Poetry, Faultline, and Rogue Agent. She lives in Seattle where she is working on her first novel. "Delphine" is written from the point of view of that novel's protagonist. She can be found @meliski81 on Twitter and Instagram.

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