I evolved to hold you
with all the tenderness of rain

filling a dried spring basin
after a century of drought,

washing the sand from the bones
of the not-yet-fossil fish

and drumming resurrection spells
into the cracks in the earth.

I evolved to carry you
in the curve between my five

lumbar vertebrae, sheltered
under the same roof

as a piece of sky tipped
out of balance by drunken birds

and dead moths pressed dry
under the desert sun.

I evolved to hide you
between two strata of the

unmarked cave where those
last fish sought futile refuge

from oblivion and where my
mother left me lying, ear pressed

to the ground, listening
for the vestiges of the aquifer.

 

Maggie Wang (she/her) studies at the University of Oxford. Her poetry and criticism have appeared in Poetry Wales, bath magg, Versopolis Review, and others. She is a Ledbury Emerging Poetry Critic and a Barbican Young Poet.