SHE WAS INJURED, BUT SHE SURVIVED

by Kimmery Moss

A military father

Asthmatic lungs

A hard fall that cost me half a tooth

There was that deep fear in my childhood bones

I wondered

Would the darkness consume me whole?

Would it chew me first?

Would it ever spit me out?

I found myself in the great belly of it all

I grabbed the tongue of the whale itself and yanked

I put my back into it

I slammed the walls of the inside of its mouth

I kicked it before I wore these thick boots

(I am me, after all)

It spat me a thousand miles into the sky

I was free

Then I was falling

Still, afraid

Falling

Falling fast

The wind whipped at me while I took the bones of my arms

and fashioned them into

wings

I stripped my flesh and stretched it

I made my own wings from the body my mother made me

I was once just the seed in my own grandmother’s womb

Then a child

Then a woman

Then a bird

Then

Oh God, oh Goddess, oh Me!

I flew.