Wounds, injury, cuts and abrasions slice through Taylor Mallay’s poem New Life as the mystery of healing takes place, stretching skin thin and craving water like succulent plants yellowing on the windowsill. She watches on with a kind of downcast resignation or disconnectedness as nature takes its course in patching up her own body without her effort or even her permission, finally begging the central question, ‘Who knows how to keep anything alive?’
New Life
When what happened
to me had finished finally, I left
with a deep abrasion on my knee,
bandaged in the driver’s seat
over 1000 miles of rough road
from the point of injury.
Cuts close inward
from the edges,
they say.
Healthy skin thins itself,
stretches across – desperate
to build a barrier,
let nothing through;
a paper wall
would do. Now,
the central air shudders
on as I stare at six
small succulents –
a worried friend’s gift
of new life lined up along
this kitchenette’s white windowsill.
Wounds need water –
my beetroot red heart-shaped
scrape craves moisture as it heals
so slowly, but these green spirals
yellow at my raining ignorance.
Who knows how
to keep anything alive?
Taylor Mallay
Taylor Mallay is a student who enjoys hiking and old movies. Her previous publication credits include three poems upcoming in ‘The Write Launch’.
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