A Bullet

—golden shovel using part of the lyrics to Boy Harsher’s “Spell.”

I have words in me but they're hidden. You 
are a bubbling fountain of words, words are 
 
like blades of grass to you. In the meantime the 
snow had drifted against my lips. My light
 
is brittle and cracks upon contact. I 
am a little chipmunk, ground-beast, I lose 
 
my light in the hole I dig. I dig that, 
then peek out to see your wallowing light.
 
All day I walk in a column of dark. 
Like fine dust, like flakes of skin, you shed dark. 
 
Like a firefly, you are in the night 
but not of the night. I, the black hole's pull. 
 
Flies surround me by day, black wasps for me 
are singing as they hover. I am in
 
my bedroom, a dark whirlwind arrives. I 
flinch and call out the name of Christ. I have 
 
this name like a bullet to protect a 
heretic. More powerful than any spell, 
 
I release it. I must believe it. I 
am not good enough to wield what I know. 
 
My firefly, shine your beam on all of it. 
I suppose we all have our own dark well.
 
I fell into mine, swim now in that dark. 
You must let down the rope into the dark, 
 
pull me doused and shivering from the night. 
You are not obligated. Will you pull 
 
the rope and callous your hands and free me? 
I swim like a seal, I drop like a dime, in.

 

Mary Ann Honaker is the author of Becoming Persephone (Third Lung Press, 2019), Whichever Way the Moon (Main Street Rag, 2023), and the forthcoming Night is Another Realm Altogether (Sheila-Na-Gig, 2026). She currently lives in Beckley, West Virginia.