Jeremy Rock

Buried

“Pity them, caught . . . in a shadow of the world
they once knew. To destroy them is a mercy.”
—Carved runestone in the Valheim Swamps

Under the rain, under the streaming moonlight blue,
we were there, huddled, hungry, holding each other
for warmth in the ripe mucus of a bog, the kind of wet

that makes a lung of you. We knew how close
the sun was, how good even fir-filtered day
would feel on our filmed skin, and yet we stayed

for the rust, the metal, the way I felt seeing you
in plate so familiar I could imagine the straps
wrapped like tree rings at your chest. I am always

moving your boots closer to the fire, watching
the leather sweat poison, and at night I know I can’t
shake the stain of that place in my guts, the way rot

steeps in water, so tell me you’ll take me somewhere
this cold will starve. Tell me where we have left.

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Jeremy Rock is from Frederick, Maryland, and is an MFA candidate at the University of Alabama. He has work published in Ninth Letter, Waccamaw, Stonecoast Review, Cider Press Review, The New Mexico Review and elsewhere.