BY MOLLY FULLER

Picture: raindrops

merging on a window pane

: stream disappears into lake

The river you love so well

can hold your chest down

Image: dogs struggling

to crack or gnaw a bone

: riding an ancient bicycle

before rubber wheels

Your beloved river swells

against your breast

Picture: dogs trying

to cheat at cards

: A quick rotation,

rotator cuff disjoints,

cartilage cracks and spurs

Dams break, the house wins

You assume when you enter

the river your flesh will

enter the river, when

you get in the water you

immerse yourself whole

skin bones teeth soul

Photograph: wolves fighting

breaking bones for marrow

: lower now, into the muck

Water gathers against water

contains break and last breath

the heft and the weight

of the body in silence

Picture the sunlit surface

: minnows flicker, ripple

Molly Fuller is the author of For Girls Forged by Lightning: Prose & Other Poems (All Nations Press) and two chapbooks Tender the Body (Spare Change Press) and The Neighborhood Psycho Dreams of Love (Cutty Wren Press). She is the winner of Gris Gris’s 2020 Summer Poetry Contest.

Process Note: I wrote this poem during a writing residency at Vermont Studio Center, which is in Johnson, VT, and has a beautiful river running through it and right outside the writing studio windows. I spent the first few days of the residency staring out my window at the river and getting into the rhythm of writing while also being mindful of not pushing myself due to my chronic health condition. This poem was inspired by that river and about the tension I was experiencing as a writer living with fibromyalgia. The tension between moving water and photographs/pictures mirrors my negotiation between everyday living and the limitations of chronic pain disease.