Laura Merleau

BRIDGE

All night I've been building it,
Driving backward
Backhandspringing
Down Main Street
Praying there's no cop around
For miles

For the reconstruction
Of my crushed vertebra
Brought to town
In the surrey
Drawn
By the mule
From childhood

To unspell
The deaf and mute
Spirit to refill

The waves of power and freedom
That came to me when
I turned
My
Self in the air

Low in the foreground
Loomed the evaporating
Blade of the crescent
Moon

The arching
Pulse
Of sleeplessness the bends
In the road
Turning the sick into
Fish floating
Beside cats

It is not the healthy who
Need an engineer and the algorithms
Were fasting, dismantling
Constellations of black

Lightning
Fastening onto another
Cast
In my future and the lilies

How softly they served
As landing pads reflected
In your eyes

* * *

BACK INJURY

After the cast is taken off I return
To the town where I grew up to find
The cathedral next door to
The dance studio where
Three nights a week I thinned

My aerials – a gothic ceiling
Carved out of a sky
I would never touch
But come to know
Like each crushed vertebrae of my spine

That will never heal – gargoyles
Tumbled together with saints and
Stained glass bumping against clouds
I threw myself into softly
Landing on my feet on this steep

Hill I built where before there wasn't even
A tree only the iron night moving into my warm
Muscles still learning to fall

Laura Merleau was a dancer and acrobat years ago, until she injured her back. The injury triggered the onset of fibromyalgia, which she keeps under control by following a sugar-free diet, doing yoga, and taking long walks. She lives in Waterloo, IL, with her husband and two beautiful cats.