Thankyou small life in half darkness, tasting leaves, sweeter sweet decay as the swollen morning opens, parts of myself. I have given every one over in sleep to this healing, poetry the edge of me, the only shape left hanging on my hollow, I try to braid as I braid long hair in the dark. Just like my mother, I have longed to be what I already am. This redness a fire I’ve known better with my fast tongue than any other quickness. Until this morning. I have been emptied. What is left is Thankyou. As I swallow & swallow it brims my body with warmth, with salt the most frustrating & forceful are elementally submerged underneath it’s eclipse. I walk to the window, unsure of where to put my hands now that I am oceans of Thankyou. The pinkening hills. My words survive as small dark seeds & are buried. I have little to say.
Aiyana Masla is the author of the chapbook Stone Fruit (Bottlecap Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Cordella Press, the West Trestle Review, Thimble Literary Magazine, Vagabond City Poetry, Rogue Agent Journal, and as a part of the collection So Many Ways to Draw a Ghost. Based in Brooklyn, New York, she is an interdisciplinary artist and an anti bias educator. More of her work can be found at www.AiyanaMasla.com
Amethyst Review 