Paige Welsh

Humility

We lose the best of us in a famine,
chip them up like tree bark each season.
After the airplane hits the mountain,
we’ll paw the overhead bins for firewood,
then burn the tray tables instead.
We won’t savor our lone square of chocolate
nor our thimble of rum.
The frozen copilot is on the table, now.
We eat what is handed to us.
Dressed for a holiday in Chile,
we now peel skin socks
from the people who waited too long.
Should the avalanche come,
I give you permission to dig me out,
cover my face, and cut me to the bone.
Remember the proverb of the fox and the wolf
caught in a tin. The hunter pops the lid,
and only finds one.
Down the hill a crone simmers milk on the stove.
We ball up her robes in our chubby fists.
She keeps the oven hot.
It’s big enough for each us
to take a child’s pose
as we fold ourselves into dough.
The first time you consumed a human body
it was a gift.

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Paige Welsh's creative work and reviews have been published in Narrative Magazine, Bear Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Tinderbox Poetry Journal and Gigantic Sequins. When she's not writing, she likes to garden with her partner Chris, and their cat, Biscuits.