Poetry by Kelly White Arnold

Jesse James CC




Ashes

When I was just old enough for memory 

                               to stick, the lit tip of my mother’s cigarette 

branded my arm as I leaned in for an embrace, heat searing 
a perfect semipermanent circle that sneered up at me 
for decades after—a reminder that getting too close burns.  

I don’t remember if I cried. 

Thirty years later in an unkempt apartment 
in Asheville, I dig ashes from angry wounds in my daughter’s 
arms, bandage burns from sage bundles stubbed out on skin, 
her attempt to smudge sadness and shame.

An almost stereotypical morning after. She’s coming down angry,
apartment littered with dirty laundry and empty wine bottles, 
my alcohol wipe swipes met by her cold resentment, fire and tears 
absent from her eyes, gaze hollow but hostile--

                                             the soot of her skin.

Millennial mumble rap from some group that once played Bonnaroo 
spills forth from cracked-face phone.  She sings along as if driven
by a motor with a fading battery, makes a show of avoiding eye 

contact.  I swallow rage/grief/fear, taste vomit burning throat-back, 
eyes sting, mouth a tightrope I pull from either end.  My blue-eyed
baby who once sat on my lap to eat birthday cake now draws 
impenetrable fire lines around her self. How did we get here?

I will my eyes to stem the flood that threatens, rub ointment 
into what precious little can be fixed,  contemplate the ways      
we seek to flee our selves,
                                                             wonder what scars this season will leave. 

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Kelly White Arnold (she/her) is a mom, writer, teacher, and lover of yoga. Her work has recently appeared in Petigru Review, Hellbender, and Reedy Branch Review.  She lives in the North Carolina Piedmont with her two favorite humans and one unhinged cat but dreams of mountains beneath her feet.  Her first chapbook, Decidedly Uncertain, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.  



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