Migration

To pass through the perimeters
take only what fits on your person
or people. It’s down to the essentials–
the locket, the papers. But enter thickly
no trickle. Leave drawers wagging open,
chairs overturned, but take years grafted
hastily into your bones like rings in a tree,
tiny x’s closing what’s still red and itching.

A train, a vessel, a wave may take you
in exchange for a savings. A country
resists you. Still, you are brimming on the surface
of a body of water, contained by levees,
banks, and borders. Survey this,
your new dominion, arms spread wide over
all that lies below you.

 

 

About the Poet:
Amy Neill Bebergal studied short fiction at Sarah Lawrence College and is currently a master’s student of social work. She has been writing poems exclusively after years of consulting as a technical writer in the biotech industry. She now works as a play therapist for children on the autism spectrum and lives in Cambridge with her husband and son.

 

Photo by  Chraecker Heller.

 

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