We Brought Nothing Into This World, and It Is Certain We Can Carry Nothing Out: A Ghazal
These are the kinds of days where we could watch the branches break.
Speak our nos below the light, tonguing edict, crack-neck, break.
Say one night I wake up teething. Say one night I wake up,
sweat-dry, with the trees clawing at the windows. What breaks?
My back? These plates? Another bioarchaeology
of gun-blown skulls. When you make eggs, I imagine each break
you drive to the shell as a shot winding back towards center.
Always entrance and exit: ninety-five theses to break
open the door. What is left but exit wounds? A mouth that
can’t speak, can’t close. Like craters, we swallow light, lick bone, break.
Ava Morgan is a sophomore majoring in English and the Humanities at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her work features in the University of Colorado Honors Journal, Green Ink Poetry, Rogue Agent, and Berkeley Poetry Review. When not found hunched over a book, they enjoy knitting, hiking, and listening to music as loud as possible.