Later, I Learned to Speak Without a Tongue.
       

But first I wrote backwards.
First I learned to breathe without my throat.

Once, my teeth chattered alphabets and people sat in rows
to hear me speak.

Later I wrote on paper and the paper cut itself to emptiness.
Later I sat alone in the pew.

Once I chanted into the empty nests of finches.
Once a cathedral grew in the meadow,

crowns of flowers on the skulls of deer.
Before that I had children.

After that, everything I loved became a hole.
I lay down and shouted names into the dirt.

After that, eyes grew upon my heart and all those eyes
grew hearts and all those hearts eyes and hearts and eyes

were trapped inside me in the dark. Later the children will
come back and we'll swim moonlit in the river.

Later, an emptiness will swallow me and whole.
After that I will turn to grass.

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Copyright © 2019 Lisa Allen Ortiz All rights reserved
from Colorado Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission