📃 Daily(ish) poem → 00348 ◊ Caught Between So Many Surfaces ◊ Madeleine Barnes
Caught Between So Many Surfaces
To break. Une fille, une robe, une chemise. Edge of late winter;
a girl unfolding books into paper boats, the Seine sinking, rising.
She has no memory of hands underwater, pulling her to the surface.
A hoop of water opening above her. Consacrer: to sacrifice. Her father
shines his flashlight at nothing, calling into her footprints.
It comes from far away, the sound of his instructions,
Blesser la corps: watching every little crack converge.
Fisherman crowding the pier, a medic’s voice revolving.
Je ne regrette rien. Snowfall, dusk, debris, the shore, nothing else.
This calms her. Someone is rowing as close to her as their vessel
permits them. Someone is lighting a flare, taping off entrances,
opening and shutting an ambulance door. Someone is lowering
a helicopter, wondering if time of death has been called.
The day will come when she herself is a river.
She leans into herself with the force of a current rerouting.
She is prepared to present her body. The X-Ray fills with ice.
—Madeleine Barnes
—found in The Rattling Wall (Spring 2011; Issue 1)