Mary Ann Honaker
Forensic Files
Like a child who holds her breath for minutes,
I buried my heart in a crawlspace grave.
A woman was found in a crawlspace grave
sealed inside a drum. She was pregnant.
Sealed inside a drum, my pregnant grief waited.
A decade passed in murky dark.
I made a whole decade murky and dark.
It's a talent of mine: not birthing.
It's not much of a talent, death not birth.
The woman when found was rot soup and bones.
Rot soup and bones instead of a mother.
I can pull my tears back into my eyes.
I can pull my tears back into my eyes
like a child who holds her breath for minutes.
Mary Ann Honaker is the author of It Will Happen Like This (YesNo Press, 2015) and Becoming Persephone (Third Lung Press, 2019). Her work has appeared in Calamus Journal, Drunk Monkeys, Euphony, Juked, Little Patuxent Review, Off the Coast, Rattle.com, Van Gogh’s Ear and elsewhere, and has been nominated for a Pushcart prize. Mary Ann holds an MFA in creative writing from Lesley University. She currently lives in Beaver, West Virginia.