print previewback HAYLEY GRAFFUNDER
Relic
The shine of a beetle’s back becomes a shard of glass. It is night
because it is always night, the way green must always be green
though winter hazels my eyes, the way bones
belong to just one person, the way I will never be anything but ten
when my brother drives off for good. Before it was a beetle,
the shard of glass might once have been a Heineken
& either way I am glad to miss it with my step.
I walk circles around the point & miss it every time—
when I am fourteen, I miss it in Wednesday night catechism,
meditating on the schoolroom carpet. Sister Joseph
praises the blue light, the spirit I see behind my eyelids
& suddenly I am holy, a martyr, a saint, my bones
split & exalted as relics in as many altars as one body
can supply. The girl of me would have died for anything
she felt chosen by, so it was that moment, there, she perished—
and now? Always the dark, always my brother driving away. 
Like Riding a Bike
Relic