[Poetry | Issue 13]
Katey fUNDERBURGH
Skylight
I felt the pines get sick before I saw the sickness spread. Yellow blight crawled over the mountainside and the green blinked out, the forest went bare. Something churned within me. I studied my naked body in the mirror, took a marker to my bedpost to record the date of the first time I noticed my soft spots hardening into real hips. I climbed up the pines until I suddenly outgrew what the trees could carry. The branch snapped. Blood dripped down my shins, fused jeans to skin.
When we could afford to eat out, my grandmother wrapped our crusts in napkins to stash in her purse for the fox who learned to visit. My grandmother called the fox she. Sometimes I believed she wouldn’t finish her food on purpose. The fox came nightly until mange spread and then the fox stopped coming at all.
In school we learned that pine blight was curable only by wildfire. My mother and grandmother brought me and my sister with them to clean the home of the wealthiest woman in town whose new floors were made from blighted pines. We carried backpacks filled with rags and bottles of chemicals. My sister played with dolls on the stairs. The woman explained to me why her floors were more ethical than traditional hardwood. I listened while wondering if the light pouring down from her skylight would taste like sugar or bleach.
Katey Funderburgh (she/her) is a queer poet raised in the Rocky Mountains. Currently residing in Santa Fe NM, Katey is a creative writing teacher, abortion doula, and abolitionist. You can find her on IG @katey_alyse, or in a meadow somewhere absorbing the sun.