metamorphic

by Alice Stainer

I have magma for my blood.

It boils through my body

on swelling currents,

searing frail channels,

searching for fissures,

spoiling for faults,

seeking the places 

my plates do not meet,

and then erupts.

My crust is molten rock 

and sombre ash.

It glows with the dark light 

of the deep places,

water hisses at my touch.

I am sheer inferno.

And so I retreat from heat

into coolness of birch. 

I am no longer igneous,

and will fear no more 

the blaze of the sun. I know 

a birch is figured moonshine,

reaching pearly fingers for 

its birthplace high above.

Now I will weep only

the sweetness of sap,

shed only silver curls;

dark diamonds my wounds,

wood-warts my scabs.

Swathed in silk-white wrappings

I will heal and grow.

As I walk now in this wood,

hot feet sizzling on soil,

I pick up this circlet of birch skin,

gauge the heft of my wrist

and slip it on.

Alice teaches English Literature to visiting students in Oxford, UK and is an active musician and dancer. The intersection of literature, music and dance is at the heart of her creative life. She has only recently found the confidence to share her work, which you can read in Green Ink Poetry, Steel Jackdaw, 192 Magazine, Atrium, a Marble Poetry Broadsheet and The Dirigible Balloon, amongst other places, and forthcoming in After Poetry, The Dawntreader and Corvid Queen. She tweets poetically @AliceStainer.