Timber-people like me

This seam: your palms bearing magnolias for me,
where my portrait taken, sun-blown, harsh-angled, but blooming.

This hem: the river bridge that swayed with quotes embossed for tread,
where the city was a hemisphere of soundless buildings,

bowing to our synthesis. This pattern: how we huddled to shear our bodies
against the sharp wind, bending our knees

to give over to the sawing rhythm, holding our breath.
It was there your fear slipped off our solid, love,

the catalyst for stitches to cover the wind-tunnel,
now home to a wooden heart, carved with embroidery hands,

with rigid holes for arteries, accordion function to pump.
My amateur skill shows in assembling organs,

For you can always hear me coming, one of many
timber-people with replacement parts, that drag and rattle

when I cross bridges, where I let the wind push me where it wants,
how I smell like cedar and dead petals.

***

Originally from Ontario, Canada, Loren Walker is a twice-nominated Pushcart Prize nominee and a finalist in the Beulah Rose Poetry Contest. Her poems have appeared in Hive Avenue Literary Journal, QU Journal, the West Texas Literary Review, Perch Magazine, and Sugared Water, among other publications. She has self-published two chapbooks: dislocation and strong water; her micro-chapbook neverheart was published by Dancing Girl Press in 2021. Loren is also the author of award-winning fantasy and science-fiction novels, a linocut printmaker, and embroidery artist; she lives in Providence, Rhode Island.