Like all bodies
I was born in bloodlust

worshipped by fat
under the tongue
wine runnels

Years, insects
nourished me and
I grew
slick mystery

oiled archaic teeth
ancestry
hooked jaw
inundating waterways
for hundreds of miles

One day soon
I will
die
with my belly
blurred over and
carved out
soft on the rocks
of my childhood
home

Bruising god on the recoil
blood in the rhythm of the river
rotten scar tissue torn open

given back to the dirt

Annika Bratton is an art lover and maker who likes bad horse drawings and dislikes overhead lighting. You can find her poems in Sea Wolf Journal, Liminal Spaces Magazine,  Rats Ass Review, and elsewhere, or by going over to her house.