Saturday book feature — Body as a Home for This Darkness by Maeve McKenna

Gifted a bouquet of lavender bound
in green twine, I am navigating
the streets of a place I am lost in,

offering the moody cathedral’s
gun metal steeple our tone
behind this city’s summer skyline.

A prayer in the guise of a wreath:
Violet whorls sprinkled to the heavens
holding you in permanent cloud,

fragrance delicate as my belief,
your picture wrapped
in cling-film inside my handbag,

a faint glimpse of you as I reach
for my phone to capture
the spire piercing the belly of dusk.

And here, under a gang of crows
eyeing my pointless gift,
fluttering their black capes over

this purple moment, I inhale
your wild will, a chaotic residue
landing as confetti on my hair.

by Maeve McKenna from Body as a Home for This Darkness

Cover photo by Maeve McKenna

OPEN to Submissions