The air nips
as I nip. Bite by bite the pylons
I pulled from my body, the structure
dissolving inside me
into one thought, the pattern
I pass to my eggs, song
I hum into their cells
as I paint them carefully
between boards in a warm corner.

By grace I lived the summer,
revised and rebuilt every day
until the pattern perfected—oh children
at times I spread my body flat,
felt the wind strum through this map,
symphonic at the very harp of me.

I carried it
in my blood, for you.
To do what we have always done,
every day a line, a suture, making
our hope, our hunger
sew the landscape together.

Brianna Flavin

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