"Tears" by Josephine Florens
Natalie Zhang | Ornithology
A triptych
I.
You had bathed bodies before. An uncaging,
Symphonizing, the songbird swallowing ego
Until it trips twice and dies. You skinny
-dip on the precipice of cliffside angles,
Eulogies, mothers migrating in flocks, the
Stillborn beaks left ajar. Holy tongues and choke pride,
Rotting teeth dragging past psalm, they
Metamorphosize mortalness into worth.
II.
Thrice, today, I shouldered half-winged coffins over
My unzipped back until the friction
Felt synonymous to faith. Because I burn
Under the heat—double knotting my tongue,
Performing labor with due diligence so hatchlings
Who divorce their youth can unlearn suffering the same way
My first birth taught me ephemerality.
III.
On Sunday, you shoveled out the sternal from my rib,
Let it dig into the dirt: this is where I want to be buried.
This is where I want to learn to take flight. Here,
We trade tercets for talons. Here, we gut ourselves
Inside-out. Here, we are slaughtered to the bone.
Beneath the altar, pressing feathertips into the folds of our palms,
The pain seeping into our callouses, singing
A songbird learning how to fall.
I.
You had bathed bodies before. An uncaging,
Symphonizing, the songbird swallowing ego
Until it trips twice and dies. You skinny
-dip on the precipice of cliffside angles,
Eulogies, mothers migrating in flocks, the
Stillborn beaks left ajar. Holy tongues and choke pride,
Rotting teeth dragging past psalm, they
Metamorphosize mortalness into worth.
II.
Thrice, today, I shouldered half-winged coffins over
My unzipped back until the friction
Felt synonymous to faith. Because I burn
Under the heat—double knotting my tongue,
Performing labor with due diligence so hatchlings
Who divorce their youth can unlearn suffering the same way
My first birth taught me ephemerality.
III.
On Sunday, you shoveled out the sternal from my rib,
Let it dig into the dirt: this is where I want to be buried.
This is where I want to learn to take flight. Here,
We trade tercets for talons. Here, we gut ourselves
Inside-out. Here, we are slaughtered to the bone.
Beneath the altar, pressing feathertips into the folds of our palms,
The pain seeping into our callouses, singing
A songbird learning how to fall.
Natalie Zhang is an Asian-American writer from Seattle, Washington. Not only does she adore writing about birds and women, but she also entertains herself with NYT games on a weekly basis. She has always wanted to see the eclipse, but always forgets her glasses.
Josephine Florens is a Ukrainian artist based in Germany. Her paintings explore identity, memory, and resilience through expressive color and symbolic form. Exhibited internationally, her works have appeared in journals and collections across Europe and North America.
