It's Still Life

a journal

Departure’s Own Language

The crows here wear hoods —
wear their judgments inside-out
black hoods, white silence,
like old decisions.

He says they’re gentler
than the ones at home,
less eager for the eyes of the dead.

He laughs.
I don’t.

Seagulls scream like mothers
and steal like gods.
The one that took my rabbit,
Grandmother named Fenrir.

It wasn’t mine,
just dinner still breathing,
its name still-warm,
and stitched to my ribs.

The Baltic is asleep —
its hush a cradle
for grief we don’t say aloud.
It doesn’t hear
the unspoken funerals
in our throats.

Same same, she told me.
Whether Fenrir eats it
or we do—honour the food,
not the one who feeds.

Gratitude is the plate, not the teeth.

Now I sail west.
The ship moves as breath does —
slow and steady.

Sweden is a bruise
on the edge of water,
her shoreline
only memory’s ghost.

I left my grandmother
to the wind — her ashes
cupped by rain,
tucked into earth,
drawn up the veins of pine.

The scent of her
is sap,
resin-thick,
and holy.

It is quiet and soft, and catches my breath the way first snowfall does.

I’d forgotten
what it feels like
to be part
of a long line.
A button
stitched in its hole.
Threaded.
Held.

I am the daughter of ashes.
Daughter of slow fire.
The echo of her name.
I am the creek
my father turned to milk
with his ashes.

And the lesson is this:
We do not vanish.
We change our form.

We are all bound
by ash — We learn to wear the wind.

You are still here.
You are still held.

Imagery and poems/prose ©Misky 2006-2025.

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