After the discoloration of the Russian Iskitimka River — January 11th, 2024
I once wrote about rivers of blood.
I didn’t think they’d be real.
When I walked along her bank today, she
weeped to me silently and
whispered: when will it end?
I touch her shaking hand and the world
stops for a moment. The snowflakes
turn into shards of glass
momentarily, reflecting the flashing
cameras and unblinking eyes.
Then it moves on; fickle and unbending.
God is apparently real.
And he is unfortunately angry.
Beetroot red poison dissolves into
flesh and eats away at the thread-like delicacy.
She asks me why she sees
so many
reflections of her crimson pain, but no
promise of a tomorrow. This
is what we make of a permanent scar
on delicate, porcelain skin.
Once, she had tattoos of ducks:
their necks curved like the unshapely form
of her graceful descent. Below
the surface, she held life more fragile
than I could imagine.
Today, she is not Iskitimka.
She is discolored/a memory/polluted/dis-
turbing/a mystery/poisonous/
She is naked, smearing her intricate duck tattoos
with a bloodied palm.
But, she is not Iskitimka.
She is wounding; crane feathers soaked
With scarlet tar; a velvet scarf that strangles me;
liquid toxicity held in vials smashing on the
white floor.
She is not Iskitimka.
Sarah (she/her) is an eighteen-year-old poet who is completing her senior year of high school. She is an alumni of Yale Young Writers and Kenyon Young Writers Workshops. Sarah enjoys soft sunsets on the ocean and baking cinnamon rolls.