stripped of our wholeness, we feel no grief

You brought yourself in handfuls
to me. Your pieces splayed across our bed
like scraps of cloth. I marveled at the aggregate
scattered there, all of you offered up
in soft, folded stars.

I gathered you up; love, gathered with fists
callused and weary with wanting. I held you,
all of you flat against me, stitched you there,
opened you up.

I carried you with me in December when snow
longed to fall but didn’t. You lined my shirts,
vests and parkas; became my treasured pockets.
You held yourself open, and I rested myself
in pieces, in you.

Mayzie Sattler (she/her) is a poet from Upstate New York. She is a second year MFA candidate at Sarah Lawrence College, where she serves as Poetry Editor for Lumina Journal and teaches for The Writing Institute. Mayzie has worked for Black Ocean and The Southampton Review, and is currently an intern for Black Lawrence Press. Her poems have appeared in Coffin Bell Journal and WILDsound Writing Festival. She currently lives, works, and studies in Yonkers, NY.