The Only Way Back

          I tie the horns down
to a tight surface,
                     swan dive a branch of gills.

          Fingers turn to chalk,
                                then stone.

                                Needle and thread led
           back and forth through the throat,
                      mouth full of lullabies and ghosts.
                     
                       The only way back is to weave,         
                                            to watch the turn,
            to mark the wood and wait.

            The ghost comes to feed.
                                  His threadbare coat
                       gets caught on the wire.

            I bind the ghost’s brittle body with fishing line.
                                I wind the string taut,
                      try to squeeze out an origin story.

                                 It’s blank.
            Still, I wait for it to breathe. 







Sara Williams resides in Ypsilanti, Michigan. An avid reader, writer, and teacher of poetry, she works as a creative writing lecturer at Eastern Michigan University and Writer-in-Residence with InsideOut Literary Arts Program in Detroit. Work is forthcoming from The Bakery, Four and Twenty, and Rufous City Review.