Bluewater

 "Bluewater"

Three girls on the rail track. I'm the one
in the middle. Sun wobbles through trees. The sisters
smoke and swear. It's no one's fault
that our mothers are friends, we all know and don't

know this. The younger sister sucks cocks
for money. And sometimes for free, she says, and
laughs. By the time we get to the water it's night
and the bridge is a huge, shiny staple arched over dark,

crumpled riverbanks. This is where you come
to die, says the older sister. We stand in the mud
under steel crosses, look for bodies
bumping in the current. Bluewater bridge. We can't see

the colour of the water. The bridge is silver. Going
back, a spike of moonlight through our thin chests.
The older sister holds my hand all the way, without
my asking. Next year, when she is seventeen, she will plunge

from the hood of a moving car. Skull wired together,
teeth gone. Brain damage, skin grafts, someone else's
rebuilt face. The younger sister will marry
a man who hates her, have children, find

god. Head tilted back, she will take the
lord’s body into her mouth, again and again, pray
for a part of her life to start or stop or
be revealed. This is how

faith happens, sanctifying what the body remembers.
Our bodies that have trusted what touched them, what
they were taught to touch. Something fills our mouths –

the flesh, the word (holy, holy). There is space
above the moving dark to fly through. Believe this.
There is the shaky knot of hand in human hand.

                                                            -Helen Humphreys