The 2River View 23.3 (Spring 2019)
 
 

Mary Sun

Trauma/vision I

I am calling collect for the orphan army.
Taping the Milky Way spiral to a sea of searchlights,
flooding the sky with a healing that has never known straight lines.
Everything is division. Everything is hoping that they know when they don’t.

I have laid out bait for the ouroboros,
bottles of waves shredding themselves on the rocks,
dying again and again for a moon that will never stay.
There is a basket in the corner, for when it comes and you shatter in place.
It will take and take and you will give and give and I will collect you back together then.

After, let out the string behind you.
Leave me a map to your permanent battlefields. Take my umbrella
to Neverland and don’t give it back. The storms there cannot help leaking through the sky.

It is so hard to unclench my fists and let you home,
where the war began. Not knowing if family alive means
a family alive.

All I saw were the laws they wrote without you. Baked onto your trembling bones.

On bad days, I cannot forgive the sepsis
for reaching your eyes. For turning your world into a lie of mirrors
and your nervous system into a child with too-small hands that cannot turn off the faucet.
I never know if I am feeding the soldier or the child. The water never stops being sacrificed.

Beloved, if I lose you here,
if the dust clogs your lungs and the gangrene creeps heavy,
remember this. Worms only feed on what was once most alive.
When they have you, slit their stomachs with your broken-edged heart and rejoin the sun.
 

Mary Sun is a neurodivergent medical student whose work explores abuse, identity, and connection.
She has work forthcoming in publications such as Wide Eyes Press and The Write Launch.
Previously, she built software and worked in finance.

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