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.
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.
