Audrey Kim

Glory of the Snow

In the snow I was one seed:
then I started to grow. When
the snow melted, it nourished me,

watered me. What I was trying
to do was inch my way closer
to death. When I emerged,

I saw the sky. I gradually
noticed all the things that could
kill me. But I couldn’t move.

I sat there and let the danger
move through me, like a storm.

⎯

Marked
After Cain and Abel

Brother, your sheep still mill the ground.
I see them in my mind’s eye: grazing
the grass, their snouts nudging the earth,
the earth that I once tilled, and that you

once bled on. I remember how you fed
each sheep, their heads turned towards you
like sunflowers to the light, while I
cleaved scars into the dirt. So when

you brought the firstborn of your flock,
the one you spent night after night tending,
giving it the largest share of scraps, I wondered
how you could raise something for death.

When we were children, you would mark
the trees’ bark with a knife. So it knows
I’m here, you said. Because it belongs to us.
You took a piece of broken-off bark

and traced it, on the palm of my hand. You said,
This is my mark on you. Now live with it.

⎯

Photo by Patricia Voulgaris