“I need a father. I need a mother. I need some older, wiser being to cry to. I talk to God, but the sky is empty.” – Sylvia Plath
I gnaw at my hands in grief
I pray like poets past
and cry out to an empty sky
I too, wish I could talk with God
with my ribs in a twisted, scrambled mess
and ask them why they would bring me you
maybe this lesson isn’t mine to learn
but in the vulgarity of corporeality
I hope you saw that loving you, to me
was worth this wretched sickening hurt
because you, sweet and mistaken you
loved me back, poured all you could
into this cracked vase, empty of florals
leaking and dripping onto my chest
my fingers bleeding, jagged nails clawing
at my breast trying to touch the water of
your love before its gone, absorbed into my
skin, thirsty and begging for more
how humiliating it is to toss out dignity
for a drop of rain as I pour my own saltwater
my love falling from my face as God refuses
how familiar it is to talk to myself
and expect answers from this empty, blue sky.
Arielle Twist
Arielle Twist is an emerging Artist, Author and Aunty from George Gordon First Nation, Saskatchewan, now based out of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Her debut collection ‘Disintegrate/Dissociate’ has won The Indigenous Voices Award for Published Poetry and won the 2020 Dayne Ogilvie Prize for Emerging LGBTQ authors. In 2019 she was awarded the Indigenous Artist Recognition Award from Arts NS for her body of work.