Sarah Marquez

Self Measurements

inspired by Kelly Grace Thomas

I am the biggest place / I know. / A concave vessel, / a cave of listening.
No sound can escape. / I enter, myself / bone-framed, breaking, / and find

I am the loudest echo. / Last wish. If we / talk about lonely, / how I live now
will remember / how I want to live. / I am deepest. An open grave / waiting for silence

to drop. / For worms sticking out / to crawl backward. / The end is a house
made of shadows / of women’s hands, /cut off and sewn together.

Women taught that blood / stays blood. / When all the water inside them / is gone,
they are still family, / still female, / still. / Father is the head, / memory of the snake.

He will be again / and again / forever. / And the rib that made them / is not
indestructible / after fire, / after the vessel they are / buoyed / burns down.

Dust to dust they become. / Carry on. / Seek the near-bright star / and pray
to veil /and unveil the reflection / in the mirror. / The true-false measurements.

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Sarah Marquez (she/her) is an MA candidate at Southern New Hampshire University. She is based in Los Angeles and has work published and forthcoming in various magazines and journals, including Amethyst Review, Capsule Stories, Ink&Nebula, Kissing Dynamite, Peculiars Magazine and Twist in Time Magazine. When not writing, she can be found reading for Periwinkle Magazine and Random Sample Review, sipping coffee, or tweeting @Sarahmarissa338.