After Edith Sodergran

I am nothing, plus the idea of young rust

insisting upon metal to darken.

I am pointing at Saturn to learn my cardinal directions.

I am a Zyprexa elixer, Abilify amplified, Seroquel’s seductress,

Geodon’s bright home. I am milligrams and milligrams

of shy side effects. I am partially checking in here

based upon my hidden knowledge of wire.

I am the feeling of oh god, but soaked in rain.

I am building something into the outback

of the mind. Here I am: still keeping my skirts down

even throughout the full Niagra

of night. I am splitting the distance between bruised hips

and eating dirt, and I’m having a second life cycle

with the days I thought I lost.

I am the man slung like a dead deer

across the morning doorstep and I am the cherries

I give him. Tonight I am folded,

like water, back into the skirts of the hills.

I am ramming my silky body

into the spaces between stones.

I am the soft diagnosis

‘You need mindfulness,’ I am the rivers rap

white soothe. I’m each friend who wonders

what are you doing there I am learning,

from the prolific fish runs, how to preserve food

year round. I am learning to stay drunk

on nothing so reality cannot destroy me.

I am standing on the peak of Divisadero

where you can see everything, plus the idea

of mountains, whose plates are always

broken, who rise there and insist

I am.

                         Molly Damm is an MFA candidate at the University of Virginia.