Postcard

you speak to a mountain
by becoming
it your body in her
language of minerals
a whisper a humming
bird’s fluttering wings
since I became
a mother nearly a decade
ago my body
smells like milk
women tend
to live longer but I
selfish as I can be
wish never to be
without you
in the language
of mountains
heavy water
and debris
say The Grand
Canyon I am
happy now
now just another
place from here
I can send you this
whenever you are
as easily as a love
letter a postcard
without
a return address

Ananda Lima wrote the poetry collection Mother/land (Black Lawrence Press, 2021), which was the winner of the Hudson Prize. Her work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poets.org, Kenyon Review Online, Gulf Coast, Poet Lore, Poetry Northwest, Pleiades, and elsewhere.

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