Poetry by Rachael Collins

​David Schiersner CC




The Feast of Us

Two sisters, paddling through a brothy riptide.
Climbing kitchen counters, outstretched fingers yearning 
for cans of whole tomatoes or Campbell’s or Spaghettios eaten cold,
always ever so slightly out of reach.
Greedy consumption of Food Network with insatiable eyes.

You wondered once if what we shared was love, 
or simply memories no one else could understand.
Two soldiers standing on a hill, 
looking down upon the remnants of a scorched battlefield.
I want to bathe you in a bowl of soup 

until that golden brown crust of pain softens into the mush we once were.
A man on the news said infants drown in bathtubs
so I showed you how to blow bubbles underwater.
Taught you to read with alphabet pasta letters, 
scooped up in “Here come the airplane!” spoons

And gulped down into a warm belly
to grow hands that mix dough for challah and encircle steering wheels
as you leave and come back, leave and come back,
like the over-under of hair in twin braids parted down the middle
or dough longing for the brush of an egg. 

Two girl-loaves, two stretched and braided and ovened,
heated like a promise.
Safe, sisters filled and filling with warm bread breath.
How simple it is to rest and become what you are
what you were kneaded to be.

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Rachael Collins has never had her work published, other than the inclusion of an exceptionally over dramatic poem entitled “The Fox” in a grade school writing anthology. Nevertheless, observing the world around her and attempting to share it, as well as her own experiences, through words has remained a lifelong constant. She often writes about feeling anything but heroic while working as a nurse, longing for faith, her mental health journey, and memories involving shopping malls. She lives in Seattle with her partner and two “lucky” black cats, despite a lifelong fear of felines.