What Saves Us

Bethany Reid

Can the sight of these brambles speckled by rain save me?

The sky today is a white sheet hung on a clothesline.

If I could have my childhood back, would it chirp like pine siskins in the bare limbs of the apple
tree?

I can’t be saved by the sacrifice of all creation, not by pyrocantha, not by mirabilis, not by any
combination of Latin genus and species.

I can’t be saved by the rain that begins again in slow drops.

A woman, the mother of a classmate, parked her car near brambles, just like this, like me, except like
an enchanted princess in a fairy tale she stayed until the brambles grew up around her. When she
was found, her body had become a nest for bees.

Bee ridden, what did that woman’s daughter know about sacrifice that I have yet to learn?

We are born of the body of this world.

We wall ourselves in with honey.