“Visible” by Maria Berardi

Bundled along, bound  

from room to room

to smaller room 

to cabinet 

to cubby

to ring-box 

to keyhole,

tumbling, 

hapless, helpless, now, 

as if a fall, 

a headlong loss into darkness, 

from kitchen to cellar,

down the dark stairs,

haunted.

Hands fumble

along the configuration of this cell

finger the Braille 

of these boundaries,

this space opaque until touched,

then illuminated

one phosphorescent fingerprint at a time.

In time, maybe sight,

luminescence, even, to read,

to read novels or comics

on the walls,

love is not consolation,

it is light. *

*Simone Weil

About Maria Berardi
She/Her/Hers

Maria Berardi's work has appeared in local and national magazines and online (13 Magazine, Voca Femina, Mothering, the Opiate, getborn and most recently the Colorado Sun, Twyckenham Notes, SOUTH BROADWAY GHOST SOCIETY, 8th st. publishing guild/Turnsol, Luna Luna, Leaping Clear, DASH, Heirlock, From Whispers to Roars, Panoply, The Moving Force, Good Works Review, Hole in the Head Review, Braided Way, ONE ART, The Closed Eye Open, Dillydoun Review, Crepe and Pen, and forthcoming in Mad Blood; the annual anthologies from turnsol editions (formerly 8th st. publishing guild,) New Feathers, and The Mountain and this year's Texas Poetry Calendar by Kallisto Gaia Press,) as well as at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, in Arvada, CO, in collaboration with installation artist Bonnie Ferrill Roman. Her first collection, Cassandra Gifts, was published in 2013 by Turkey Buzzard Press, and she is currently shopping around her second, entitled Pagan. She lives in Fort Collins at the foot of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains.

Twitter: @mariarazberardi
Facebook: maria.berardi.92
Instagram: mariariaberardi
Website: maria-berardi.com