Alabaster Stephanie L. Harper

I am a pink rose petal’s pale glow

the black ash tamped in furrows between the breaths of the living & the droning of the dead

dawn unfurling over sand dunes

& seagulls soaring on thermal spirits of iodine salt & shellfish

& sometimes scattering in the wind I can’t find where everything else ends & I begin

Now rising from the morning hush this cloud of me speaks to the red tail hawk perched on a streetlamp & tells her I’m fine because I’m still not sure how to talk about not being fine

I am an instar trying to be the clearest version of myself a final lucent skin to sculpt

so that the glint you find in my eyes as dusk’s last embers bleed into the sea

will be the truth of me

Stephanie L. Harper

(Previously published in Sixfold magazine)

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