In class the other day we talked about how Florens is a poet. I myself am partial to poetry and so I thought I would enjoy creating a “found poem” from Florens’ chapters in the novel. While I may have changed a word here or there, almost of the lines I have used are straight out of “A Mercy.”
I Unfold
Your back looks like whatever the sky holds.
My mouth is open, my legs go softly
free and not free.
i don’t want to be free of you because i am
the chafe of needles;
my thirst so loud i am faint.
-i want it am dying for it aching with sin-
but i understand the need for secrecy under
your jaw, where your neck meets bone.
i wilt when you say
your head is empty and your body is wild.
the dark here is great. the back of your hand strikes my face.
the fire smell of you is fatal.
i step down into the stream’s dry bed
i walk the day i walk the night i walk the day i
am living the dying inside.
you say i am wilderness.
i am.