LeeAnn Olivier

Bright Star

When the anesthesia wanes I claw through cuffed

wrists, my glutted throat a moat of gravel, tubes

sprawling from my veins like the roots of a black

gum tree until I’m pulled back under, and I take a night

train to a half-world half a world away, a serenade

of cyanide on the bedside, a red star carved at the edge

of the Black Sea. The whittled rattle of spokes on tracks,

maps and gestures little reliquaries, a stranger’s mouth

on mine, an utter hush washed over us as the lacquered

leaves of her eyes gleam greengold and my pulse rustles

like a hiss of waves. I’m dreaming my liver donor’s

dreams. What lags behind flickers and hums, his

mythologies nestled deep as a swell of bees in my ribs.