October - Poem 31

I Saw Your Face and Mine / Kathryn Johnson

A Cento composed by Kathryn Johnson with lines contributed by and for Lilly Frank, Anna Ojascastro Guzon, Kathryn Johnson, Kimberly McElhatten, H.T. Reynolds

An unkindness of leaves clings
to the fingertips of an old oak
(for when the rain decides to come around).

You feel the tides inside
of your bones shift. You file yourself away
between the brown slats
of a wild mushroom cap.

You are made of skin and godliness
(or bones and sin?),
a stationary body in the dark.

When my body forgot how to breathe
(but long after I reminded my legs to walk),
I knew that beauty is the contrast.
I promised myself a beautiful future. Sometimes,
time doesn’t really matter at all.

The sun acts as a sibling: She taught me to plant,
to water, to deadhead a commotion of daisies and goldenrod.
I was sad to learn that we are not the same. It’s easy to forget
(a mistake I am too skilled at making)
that words are signs, indicators.

I decide to fold my thoughts
(the sweet-savory scent of rain)
(the smell of sugar and fat)
(the inside of the cheek as an apple to the teeth)
into a napkin, as one kneeling in prayer

I am dismantling the apple
(manzanilla, the little apple)
and plant seeds in a child’s heart—brief guests
in the house of my body (what carries me
to the next
and to the next and
to the next).

The world will tell the story.
(We all leave for an unknown destination,
clutching our tickets in the dark.
The door gaped open, like I was Alice.