SONG SENT TO THE BODY OF MY MOTHER AND RETURNED AS MOONLIGHT

Susanna Galbraith


   Love

let    go
                 is
     a patient
let    go

an                           oyster-shell
                    like

               a               question
O
let    go
a            visit

                               go
                   g  o

       once about the house      fell

                         time

              time                time

              time
    time
that          drop            on your plate
time             time
and              a hundred
                              revisions

                  of             tea

         oo       o     o       go
                   g  o

    I      know
have known
  have measured out    life

                                    on a pin
     I
         should   begin
                    but
    o

    I      know

        the lamplight

     makes me  
          lie

and how

shall I say, I have
    watched
O  lonely

                             ragged

                                sleep

                         here beside you

but          have wept             wept     prayed

    in short    was afraid

                                 after all
      the cups
                                    of you

to      bit e
to have          the universe
to roll    toward      overwhelming
to say                  come
come back

           and so much more

at times
                       fool

I grow        I
I

     I
I
I

I do not think

when the wind blows
                                    the sea

t           o          us      we drown.

Susanna Galbraith (she/her) is from Belfast. She is an editor of Abridged magazine. Her poems have featured or are forthcoming in New England Review, Channel Magazine, Banshee, Washing Windows Too, Moonquake zine, Anthropocene, Cyphers, Her Other Language, The Tangerine and others. She won the Red Line Book Festival Poetry Prize in 2021. 'song sent to the body of my mother and returned as moonlight' is an erasure of 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' by T. S. Eliot. You can find her on Twitter @susannaalice.