SELF-PORTRAIT OF A GRIEF BYPASS

It happens mostly to another woman, spine suppler,
in a class I am forced to swallow, told not to ask

the precise moment the bridge, the gulls, the public pool,
became one hard emergency. Meaning you could sit alone,

legs dangling, dreaming of the field, but never roll its
brittle gold in your mouth. Love letter dappling

tropical waters, and no way to revive the sender.
It’s the same patient life; before names, kinder sleeping

arrangements, like fanned ripped shells, half open to
a lid of light. And how no one comes to Land’s End anymore.

Not even those who can’t stand their own breath. It is
in the compression of air, says the doctor, as the surgeon

lifts the beating cherry heart clean out of the cavity—like
a premature newborn, attaching it to a new hydraulic anthem.

Meaning, the system has failed, but can still thrash. I say
I am only here to learn the theory of beauty, not to hold it

nor take it home. If there was still a home to return to.
It was there, then not—money—the catch and release of the

designer dress that made me seem unclean. Where I’m writing
under the influence; a white curtain falling before I can examine

the drop. Towards the end, it was not my flatline. Nor my
father laid supine like a cloaked horizon. Just a falling out

with the soft yellow grasses or how to tie our wrists
to the horses that bold north—a whole coastline foaming at the mouth.

We rolled our sleeves in consent.
A skyline of poppies purged of crimson.

Translucent bodies blown, to where there was no edge.
No particular sharp instrument. No cruel way to choose you.

Vikki C.’s writing appears or is forthcoming in The Inflectionist Review, EcoTheo Review, Grain Magazine, The Ilanot Review, TIMBER Journal, Psaltery & Lyre, Action, Spectacle, The Blue Mountain Review, Heavy Feather Review, Bacopa Literary Review, Jarnal (Mason Jar Press), Astrolabe and elsewhere. She is a Pushcart, Best of the Net, and Orison Best Spiritual Literature nominee and was shortlisted in The Bridport Prize 2025. In The Blueprint of Her Iris (Ice Floe Press, 2025), a hybrid collaboration, is her third collection. She serves as a contributing editor at The Winged Moon Magazine and guest edited the Ice Floe Press hybrid series ‘Process/Marginalia/Otherworlds’.  linktr.ee/vikki_c._author