Saint of rebirth by Lisa Marie Basile

I have so long wanted a space that housed my body without making my body a separate space. Please hear me cry out in black silt; this is not my home; this is not my truth.

I have for so long craved the form of a sleek pale horse moving through fire. I wrote poems about this horse for years until the horse came to life and died again, in my hands. I have for so long craved the form of a sleek pale horse moving through death into another cycle. My hooves are a song that cannot be sung until I resurrect. Watch me gallop. Now watch me fall.

I have for so long craved the absence of fear without the absence of feeling; that my heart might splay across a tomb with the legs to get up and go again in the morning. In the morning I am the absence of that absence; I am troughs of fear. I am perpetual mourning.

Give me a world where the beauty lasts. Give me temples. I have for so long wanted a shape that could hold the aftermath of its changing. I am this way, not that way. I am sick now. I am blood-divined, crescent in my quiet war to survive.

I have for so long taken roses into the water with me, so that I might create a new sea of beauty. I wish on each petal; the sea wishes on me. I have for so long grown into this cycle, blue-gold of eve, white foam of clean, red rose of prayer.

Give me a garden where I can sleep. That my pain is just a number, that my pain outnumbers me. I have for so long wanted a space that housed my body without my body making a separate space. I have knelt at the head of the creature. I have bathed the horses at first rainfall. I have done the things that grow us. I have moved through it, inhabited by healing, rite of seed. I have sung the great animal to sleep.

I have for so long wanted a revival of the great hooves.

To make a storm of this desert.

A thing gone makes new spaces.