ryegrass
I was thin as ryegrass then, and I drank freedom from the night sky,
cool as mint and sharp as rosemary. I smelled of stale beer
and half smoked cigarettes stolen from a gas station ashtray;
the curls of smoke sang to me like stars, like knives, like candied flowers.
It was a strange year to be an empty jar. I had not yet learned
the art of drying time; how to feed myself to gaping screens,
or to flick through catastrophes like they were a record collection.
How to be gnashed in glass teeth, or to gaze into the reflection of despair
Now the hours are all wormwood, laid on the altar of an
appled god. I have burned my fingertips in the incense bowl,
the smell of flesh is a powerful offering. I have grown a fatcap
on my kidney, thick and yellow. I have learned to be crisp and hollow.
Nobody tells you how the blood gets quiet, how you learn to
drink yarrow tea, how men, transparent as sugar windows,
teach you to blunt your teeth. Time has a beetle’s patience.
It chews holes in better men. We have dead leaves for foundations.
I was thin and sharp as ryegrass, I will not be so again
Malachy Moran is an American immigrant in Norway. A PTSD survivor and recovering drug addict, Malachy has lived too many lives already to believe in reincarnation. Hopefully this is it. His work is available in Rattle: Poetry, The Brussels Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, and many others. Follow his journey on Bluesky @malformed-poetry.