“a bridge collapses and there is a poem about a thread breaking” by Ashley Howell Bunn
* three flights for life and two car crashes later
i am on the phone with my sister
while the nurse puts the screen to my father’s slant jaw
fogged eyes
says she is busy
can’t hold it up to his silence forever
my sister and i discuss
how we want to buried
in the roots of a tree
or thick fungus
at least he said goodbye
before his dissection
colon and heart and brain
fluid and feces
what it is that makes a body
*
and i keep trying to write about my father but the sway of another summer grass
hits my skin and i find myself imagining this distant lover hears my shoes click
in the halls of the hospital an echo makes his head turn and think of me with the
band playing and the pub overflowing with some kind of joy as we ate chips and
vinegar in the alley and laughed too hard for too long before my dream and that
poem and the car crash branding my arm he said it wouldn’t leave a scar
* i carry my selfishness
through fluorescence
disinfectant
regimes
burning white
prone bodies breathing machinery
piston lungs
ribcages creak and broaden
each rotation
brambles breaking
in flaming tinder
the bodies are held by none
and the heat of summer fires
lies dormant
but waiting
the virus keeps dancing
with our ghosts
like zephyr
*
and my lover purred, whirred, handed me a folded poem about a thread breaking
about time and distance and cliche about scaffolding and bridges holding and i
dreamed his gentle vastness buried his eyes the same sad as the day he ran out
the door to wave goodbye as i drove away with hair in his face and plaid shirt
sagging i slammed on the brakes
* the world burns and my father dies
friends fear for their lives in streets
lungs and skin
what is it that makes a body
at least he said sorry
before his dismemberment
when the flesh is failing
love comes through the curve of a lip
a groan
sigh
twitch of a finger
a knowing
whisper visible in cold
*
it begins to snow outside the hospital window
when my father could still speak
he called to it
About Ashley Howell Bunn
She/Her/Hers
Ashley Howell Bunn is pursuing her MFA in poetry through Regis University where she is also a graduate writing consultant. She is on the editorial staff for the literary journal, Inverted Syntax. Her work has previously appeared in The Colorado Sun, South Broadway Ghost Society, Global Poemic, the series Head Room Sessions, and is forthcoming in patchwork lit mag. When she isn’t writing, she guides and practices yoga and runs a small personal business centered around healing. She lives in Denver, CO with her partner and child. You can follow her on Instagram @howellandheal