Feu-Follet

Danelle Lejeune

__________

This trace is what’s left of us.
Look for the weight of light, the particles falling down 
like crumbs. The mass of the universe is choking, 
                          leaving lines, chain burns, in my flesh. 

These pieces of you, pieces of me, we are stardust. 
The music of gravity hums between our bodies, stars 
fell, gravity betrayed the meteors, set them on fire 
                                                   and falling into the swamp.  

Each burn, blisters the mass, the inertia a measure of
resistance that my body offers, an application of force.

                                                   Every August, we watch them die. 
Every October, we forget that they lie at the bottom 

buried in mud, buried here, burned and drowned. 
                          My body is a flat bottom boat, worthy and half sunk. 

__________

Danelle Lejeune is a wanderer who gave up on art for nearly twenty years until an alligator in the marshes off the coast of Georgia convinced her to return home to the marshes. Since then she has been published in Literary Mama, American Poetry Review, and Whale Road Review. She’s social media person for Southern Poetry Review and the Assistant Director at Ossabaw Island Writers’ Retreat.

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