FROM A DARK PLACE WAKING
(listen to the poem, read by the author)
June evenings, cool water
poured through my hair,
pillow in the freezer,
these nights too hot for sleep.
I tell you this is why I won’t
let you touch me.
Yesterday, slivers of a blood
moon dripped through
breaks in rain, menstruating
irregularly. I too am leaking
from a dark place, waking
often in a red wet tangle of bed.
Tonight, the moon in the cleared
sky looks like the moon.
You say you’re sad to have missed
the eclipse from the clouds.
Am I wrong to feel so abandoned?
Read Raye Hendrix’s Creative Nonfiction, “LOGICAL FALLACY // LUCKY MUG,” in this issue of Wordgathering.
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About the Author
Raye Hendrix (she/they) is a writer from Alabama. Raye is the author of the chapbooks Every Journal Is A Plague Journal (Bottlecap Press) and Fire Sermons (Ghost City Press). Raye is the winner of the 2019 Keene Prize for Literature and Southern Indiana Review’s 2018 Patricia Aakhus Award, and her work has been featured in Poetry Daily, 32 Poems, Shenandoah, Cimarron Review, Poetry Northwest, Zone 3, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere. Raye is the Poetry Editor of Press Pause Press, and she holds degrees from Auburn University and an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin. Raye is currently a PhD student at the University of Oregon studying Deafness, Disability, and Poetry. You can find more of their work at rayehendrix.com.