Nisus

Pia Baur

you sold me and i sold you
Down a river? To the devil? Behind my back, behind yours.
i sold you and you sold me

I was on display and you were pacing up and down
Admiring my build and wingspan:
Mechanisms of flight, of feathers, that you traced back into my skin
Back into my skin that they’d sprouted from, their origins.
Tracing origins, like roots, like growth, like history, like time
To all my past lifetimes.
You saw the beating of my wings caught in the past,
You loved that they shaped and resounded the flying figure I was then.

You loved that I was conceived in French caves of cro-magnons,
Born in a small village of proto-indo-european speakers
Raised in the Keystone State among Amish Mennonites, just another Mary Byler
Lived in rafters of ancient edifices in Germany and peered down on the crown of your skull
Flew to Iceland– the soil and skies of tiny ponies, the voices and ears of Sigur Rós

You fell into the wiry space between us
You deterred me from my personal nisus that I never even had.
Leery of what you knew,
Skeptical of how you stepped heel-to-toe around my display,
you sold me and i sold you

There were lines running up my body, up my flesh and feathers,
All the way through my hair,
Lines that defined,
Lines that came down before they ran up and gathered together somewhere in a
Crevice
of My Body,
all the way into the pregnant space between us,
Measured by hourglasses and acres.
Amends suddenly made
By slices of time,
By segments of space.
That very Moment
I was:
scratched, not smooth
Boaz, not Ruth.
perforated, not whole
ash-colored, not coal.
young, not sublime
free-verse, not rhyme.
perfect, not flawed
frozen, not thawed.
infatuated, not free
Because I sold You and You sold Me.