BY ARIELLE HEBERT
For Protection
Because you are not what loves you
or what you waste your love on;
protect yourself from the lies you believed,
each time she claimed she was clean.
Go to the ocean, gather a cat’s paw shell, pine
needles, a body thrashing in water. Bottle it up.
Let this brine sit for as long as you can.
Hold your breath. This tonic is not
for forgetting (never forget: the tattoo
you share, an apple, hers mottled,
bruised from tying off). This is a shield
made from the need to move on.
Before you drink, picture her
hands, empty of you.
Arielle Hebert Is a poet based in Durham, NC, with roots in Florida and Louisiana. She holds an M.F.A in poetry from North Carolina State University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Nimrod Journal, Willow Springs, Grist, Crab Orchard Review, and Redivider, among others. She won the 2019 North Carolina State University Poetry Contest selected by judge Ada Limón. She was nominated for Best New Poets Anthology in 2017. She was a finalist for New Letters 2017 Literary Awards and a semi-finalist for the 2016 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry hosted by Nimrod Journal. She is the director of operations and helps books come to life at Blair, a nonprofit publisher focused on emerging and underrepresented voices. Arielle believes in ghosts and magic.