Stacey C. Johnson

i am trying to admit this grief

“I do not study to know more, but to ignore less.”
- Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

not yet scar, I listen, still
forming
a wound unsealed—

we drive through forgotten places,
scratching fast over desert road, past
cracked skins of once-new homes,

& aging garden gnomes peel, aches
patched by haggard king palms in yards
of a state-prison boomtown

past freight train metal snakes shedding
that distance—too long to track,
& heavy to name

while this plea, throbbing, asks me
permission to be born––through
some hole in the landscape and i

keep watch with the thud
of a not-yet child, fist of blood
in my chest, not yet read & quickly gone

yet i want to see bee over bud
& think life! & not the sting
of it & we’re moving while something

waits—still in boxes at the new place,
already tired, cramped & keeping
time with the still heart we buried—

in your not-yet, knowing body—
child of might-have-been—wise
of you to wait unformed, beneath
a butterfly stone, in land another

claimed to own

Stacey C. Johnson writes and teaches in San Diego County. Her work appears in a variety of journals and publications. Her poetry chapbook Flight Songs was released from Finishing Line Press in February 2024. You can find her at staceycjohnson.com.