Blood
I’m inside my mind where the river’s
blown out, wall of blood cascading just
behind me so I run fast I can run
fast, even after everything.
I stay ahead of the blood. I stay ahead.
I know not to ask questions about the
origin of pain or about the screams
that tear the flawless sky to shreds right
before our eyes. I know that much. A thing
that hunts us all keeps us apart; it wants
to kill as many as it can. You’ll walk
along the lake tonight without my hand around
your hand, your voice around my heart, you’ll walk
alone for this is how it is, and I
won’t pray for any god to save us from
ourselves, but I will hold the whole of you
inside of me where you have found your way,
the blood a darkened purple wave not here,
not far away.
Bruce Weigl’s most recent poetry collection, On the Shores of Welcome Home, won the Isabella Gardner Award for Poetry and was published by BOA Editions, Ltd. in the fall of 2019. In 2021, BOA will publish a collection of his short prose titled Among Elms, in Ambush: Fables and Paradox. He lives in Oberlin, Ohio, and Ha Noi, Viet Nam.
