Today’s choice
Previous poems
Anna Maughan
Finland, December 2015
Illness had left me
brittle as frost, icicle-thin
swaddled in borrowed warmth
that couldn’t keep out the wind’s
chill, prying fingers, shivering in
at every edge.
The lake, frozen, feet-thick, immense,
swathed in drifts of baby powder.
My face burning numb under a night sky
ripped open, so tenderly,
to let the saintly lights
out to dance –
a flurry of ghosts, supple, glowing
in shades of blue and green
that hallowed my bones –
I was so small, a relic,
a skeletal finger,
slowly crumbling to dust
beneath the endless arches
of an eternal cathedral
open, always open
to the psychedelic sky.
Anna Maughan believes in the redemptive power of hope and the importance of open and honest discourse around the subject of mental health. Her writing is informed by her own struggles with C/PTSD as well as chronic pain and illness. She has been published by Human Obscura, Dust, Free Verse Revolution, Ink Sweat & Tears and Wild Roof Journal, amongst others.
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