Her whole heart was there,
laid out for me and
steaming
on the tray,
and we were surrounded by syllables
and circuit boards,
men wearing God.
The month of June hugged us in
as we sunk further towards the heavy:
all the dark viscous at the
bottom of our bellies
all the thick stuff without a
name
We didn’t know
how long it would take to scoop
it all out and
rinse,
coax the venom out
of the blood
strand by
strand
Learning how to unravel
DNA
like embroidery
floss,
We were—
before the jump at least
—looking for clear waters, but
we landed
where we started:
all ribboned chest and
salted earth.
Virginia Laurie is an undergraduate student at Washington and Lee University whose work has been published in LandLocked Magazine, Panoply, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Short Vine Literary Journal, and The Merrimack Review.