Augury

By Lana Bella / Issue 11

If I forget to cradle your last dying
volt like amateur of frost, forgive
me your lungs of night I’ve curved
in the giving of red. If I curl away
like the pulse point on your throat,
forgive me the memory of breaths
to the flashes of gold on your skin.
If I halve and halve the hinterland
to the heartache drowning limbs in
dark water, forgive me your heavy
wind circling the dovecot, spindly
and worn from your struggle to rise.
If I raw voice into shadows of night
wiping away the sleep, forgive me
your tethering map of dreams from
which you came lost ashore through
the retching sea. And if we call this
narrative love, forgive me to intend
long ago the reflecting still in season
staid, hungering for what once was
and no longer is with you.

LANA BELLA is four-time Pushcart Prize, five-time Best of the Net, & Bettering American Poetry nominee, and the author of three chapbooks, Under My Dark (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2016), Adagio (Finishing Line Press, 2016), and Dear Suki: Letters (Platypus 2412 Mini Chapbook Series, 2016). She has work featured in over 530 journals, The Cortland Review, EVENT, The Fortnightly Review, Ilanot Review, Midwest Quarterly, New Reader, Notre Dame Review, Sundress Publications, and Whiskey Island, among others. She resides in the U.S. and the coastal town of Nha Trang, Vietnam, where she is a mother of two children.