Betty Stanton

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Porous

Sunlight streaks in shafts that blinds us, yet insists
we watch them – a burning that enters through sockets,

sets our marrow aflame, slowly becomes its own kind of
radiance, a cage of light where wings beat against our

ribs. Beneath this blinding sky we wait at the shore,
water a mirror that no one dares disturb. Witnesses, dying

trees lean in like prophets, their bark peeled back, roots
twisted into silence. If our bodies could float weightless here,

rest like a bird held in air, we would close our eyes. We know
water bears its saints home the same way it bears its drowned,

fractured sounds gathering on the shoreline, porous as their
hollow bones, ribcages aviaries without songs, each breast

clutching its own lock, rattling as if wings still beat inside.
We mistake the sound of breaking for music, the scraping

of beak on cage for prayer. Addiction veils itself as a hymn,
as devotion, takes the shape of a crow perched on a sternum,

claws sunk deep. The steady drumming in our veins is a
heartbeat not our own, the singing of birds that never land.

Betty Stanton (she/her) is a Pushcart nominated writer who lives and teaches in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She received her MFA from the University of Texas – El Paso and also holds a doctorate in educational leadership. She is currently on the editorial board of Ivo Review. @fadingbetty.bsky.social