Awakening

    She lies down,
     lays down her guilt,
    her dogma,
    lets them simmer in the heat.
  Her fingertips white
 from digging handfuls of earth,
palms stained sooty black,
dirty handed.
Leaves cling to her flesh
 like paper mache,
  wrapping around her
   in a decoupage of petals,
    stalks and folds.
     Bones protrude
    from her skin
   in waves:
 ribcage out,
hipbones in,
knees buckle.
Flesh flecked
 with tiny indentions,
  specks of earth
   and hands leave their mark.
    Although her face is insignificant,
     her eyes flutter
      and roll
       like something possessed.
        Hair hangs down her back
       like twisted ropes,
      curving with each angle
     and pitch of the spine.
     It sways, jumps, and falls.
    Not silky,
   but damp and unruly,
  coiled in a bedeviled mess
 as muddled wires.
 Like snakes on Medusa’s head,
  tendrils twine, twist and tangle,
   curving up her back
    to climb the rungs of her vertebrae.
     It reaches around
     the ridges of her throat,
   constricts her breath.
  Skin dull,
 she sloughs off
her skin
and blinks.

Natalie Cochran-Murray lives in Mobile, Alabama. She is an English instructor at the University of South Alabama. Natalie is currently working on a chapbook of modernist sermons as poetry.

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