Ex-Voto

A poem by Dakota Vale

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After Dawn Lundy Martin, after Antonio Obá, after Hannah Frances, after Halle Hill

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I cast my hands in copper and hung them from the ceiling not in flight but in suspension the way Obá's children hang - knowing without innocence light enough to float heavy enough to remember

This is an ex-voto a body part offered in gratitude for surviving what didn't kill me which is everything so far which is the problem with survival it keeps happening

The more my father died the more I wrote the more words the more mattresses of language floors of syntax dirt. dark air. hallways. un-destinations

I cannot be without me I cannot be kept without me I cannot conduct without me

There is a boy in Warrington who doesn't care about my hands he cares that it's good and I think about that when the casting sets when the copper hardens around fingers I'll never feel

The hands hang there not holy not proof just the shape of what held on

My mother is not in this poem my mother is a silk curtain floated back to her nature my mother is what this is really about but I can't sift her being from my hands

I keep close to my spirit I keep learning to hear it without a body without a porch without August without the cicadas who were in the right key

The ex-voto hangs the gratitude is for this: I am the keeper I am the shepherd I am the one who stayed inside the body I don't have