Justin Andrew Cruzana

“There was a sign and it said, This earth is blessed. Do not play in it. But I swear I will play on this blessed earth until I die.” – Ada Limón

And because I was not good, I did not step inside
the ark. The flood came and went and my body,

in rebuke of the enemy, became one with ground.
My limbs, like leaves, were everywhere, my hair turned

a particular flora. Each animal, from the wolves
to the does in country dresses, ravaged like all lost

things are, made a map of my body, leaving with pieces
of me in their mouth, revealing every direction of the world.

My skin fertilized the earth until it was new; its shaking
alerted the otherness of the world like newborns do.

And because there was cruelty, there was dance
to appease it. Animalia reveled like fawns, their hooves

squeezing out the unknown of the land into the basin
left by my body. They drank from me in sweet glee.

Between lacuna and stomp, I (re)built my body there.
When I prayed for rain my hands became roofs

for any unwet thing; where I knelt there was doorway.
The entrance to my mouth was wide enough for every

unnamed creature. Then the named ones came, shrugging off
their jackets of selves, and left without putting them back.

Because the difference between a garden and a cemetery
is a grave marker, carved to coat with disappearance

the surface of every bone. When the mountains roll
out new names to crown me in I overturn each stone.

JUSTIN ANDREW CRUZANA is a poetry editor at HaluHalo Journal. He lives in the Philippines.