by Shara McCallum
I have come
not to beg nor barter but to enter.
Who are you seeking?
The past
opens and opens, fleshing me
with loss. I descend
to find my way,
I who am
haunted and a haunting.
What are you willing to abandon?
In the before, I continue:
a woman carrying on with the dishes,
the dusting, the sweeping.
But here, I am the voice of the petitioner.
Dearest, who was once of earth,
Dearest, whose departure has cleft me,
Dearest, who was my country,
my soil, my sun and sky,
every migration
is a bird taking wing.
Is this the place you seek?
Returned to the house of memory,
I take winding roads up into hills.
At one street I slow, searching
for the familiar gate
to tell me I’ve reached. But thickets
spring up, blocking my way.
I turn to find another path,
following again
until road dissolves to mist.
And if at last I arrive,
will I find you in that room
with every window like the soul
flung open and flooded
with sounds of the distant sea.
And if I spill
out into the yard, will she be still
there, the child who was me
set down in the grass,
watching the stars blinkering
on and off, their light burning
with the knowledge of death.
Is this the place you seek?
In that field I repeat
the part of myself
who believes she can stall this,
calling and calling her throat hoarse.
But you do not hear. You do not
look back but keep walking, the distance
between us widening
all night into dawn.
I want to spirit her
from this rift. I want to lift her
out of this moment and alight on any other.
But here, no bird can take wing.
No path rises up to meet my feet.
Now I have brought us
again to this place, I wade through
grasses swelling like waves,
now in this field again
I remember
as each time before
I remember
why I cannot stay and why
I must abandon you here.
At this threshold,
your last breathing—
in my ears—
is a claw dragging itself
across.
How will you carry this?
I will have to use the flowers to address you.
Wild-blooming frangipani (your cloying scent marks me).
Pointillist-starred ixora (I braid you into my hair).
Indigo-blue plumbago (you obliterate the sky).
Lignum vitae (you foretell all histories).
Roses that grow ragged along the shore (stay with me).
How will you return to the living?
Called back by the susurrating wind and sea.
Called back by the roots of my hair, dirt
beneath my nails, the body’s sweat and stink.
Called back by their voices, yours
still clenched in my fist. Called back
to all that is matter, bone, and skin,
what fragment of you survives in me
as I open my mouth to speak?
Poem copyright 2025 by Shara McCallum. All rights reserved.
See “Outside the Frame” from Shara McCallum, also debuted on The Fight & The Fiddle.
Read more in this issue: Interview | Critical Essay | Writing Prompt