Anniversary
by K Janeschek
Another gasp from the anchor. It has been weeks
since language last gripped me
by the spine. I am moving through a sea
sick and full of psychic substance. It doesn’t
fall off the skin like water does. To children
any long line of horizon is the same: ocean,
sky, wheat. I never thought the days
could get longer but they did—the birds
do not know when to sleep and when
to sing. Last spring, I swiped every egg
I stumbled over, settled them beneath
the soil. The monks tell me their nests remain empty.
Yesterday, I set out to unbury the eggs, but found
the forest flooded, water up to my knees.
Now, I’ll never know if we would’ve swallowed
their yolks or raised them as our own. Do not
tell me what you would’ve called them.
They have names that only the trees would know.
K Janeschek is a writer and labor organizer originally from the Midwest. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Mid-American Review, Foglifter, Nimrod International Journal, HAD, Variant Lit, Split Rock Review, Hoxie Gorge Review, and elsewhere, and has won an AWP Intro Journals Project award in poetry. They live in Alaska.