The honeycombed earth tessellates on the horizon, speaking of wholeness, a naked prayer for becoming. Galvanized, I leap, which is to say I am not falling but flying. I have nothing more to say about my trajectory, a path I discovered in my hunt for home. Loneliness is when we have forgotten ourselves, and so I search with my hands in the dirt. I’ve yet to find my body, but I have found the mountain’s skeleton beneath my nails. Cleaned with my teeth, the grit lingers in a passionate affair, and so I swallow the spirit with the spit. Hungry for identity. I step towards the edge of everything and postulate where I’ll land. Perhaps the earth will devour me as I have consumed it. A fair trade: listen to how her body speaks, quaking as I disturb her once more. We meet where the sky climaxes, perfected in want.
Ashley Sapp (she/her) resides in Columbia, South Carolina, with her dog, Barkley. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of South Carolina in 2010, and her work has previously appeared in Indie Chick, Variant Lit, Emerge Literary Journal, Common Ground Review, and elsewhere. Ashley has written two poetry collections: Wild Becomes You and Silence Is A Ballad. She can be found on Twitter @ashthesapp and Instagram @ashsappley.