Hive Ave Fall2024 - Flipbook - Page 24
Poetry
Hive Avenue Literary Journal
In Which a Moth Reads My
Palm and Keeps My Secrets
Carrie Penrod
We drank cherry wine
from the bottle, large sips
that 昀椀lled our mouths,
spilled over with the tart sweetness
of crisp fall nights by the river.
We fell asleep there
on my mother’s Mexican blanket
while the water slid past
the muddy bank.
I woke to a webworm moth
resting her white body on my Jupiter
mount. She was observing
my heart line, taking in the gentle
curve of it where it ends
between my middle and index
昀椀nger. I wanted to ask her,
what does it mean? She tapped
her legs against the crossing
little lines, Morse code, drank dew
from the marks of my trauma.
I would have let her take it
all if I could have.
I curled my 昀椀ngers, brushed
the soft downy wing. She glided
across my palm, sat at the fork
of my head line, turned to inspect
the branching lines of my life, so many
for her to lift o昀昀 from.
He woke behind me
and she 昀氀ew from my grasp.
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