Poetry

“Sacrifice” by Lock Howe

I met her walking down the river of stars. She looked at me strangely as one does when they recognize someone in a place they didn’t expect them to be. I didn’t know her but when her face broke into a smile I could feel mine mirroring and I realized we were kin. She did not recognize My face, my frame. She recognized the helices, the twisting DNA. She recognized the stories in my blood- Ogham first written in the fertile soil of her valley.But she also recognized that broken Thing within me. That shard I call a soul, trapped between my lungs. She placed a hand on my torso. ‘You are like me, one piece of a thousand, one thousand pieces of one thing. I too was broken,” (And as she spoke, she let me feel every word) “A geyser lifted my body high And smote me down upon the land” (Her smile never faded as she spoke) “The new river I had made caught me in its grasp, drove me against tree and stone. The tendons in my shoulder stretched and Separated, My arm torn from me, flowing in the raging water, But it was not lost to me. I existed in that arm, My hand was mine and it was me. As was my leg when it was ripped from my hip. I could still see with the eye knocked loose from my head. Of course it hurt But I knew this was not dying but becoming SomeThing my body could no longer hold. Every part of me was torn away, but I remained with every part of me. I was broken upon the land and became the river; I was broken
upon the mirroring sky and became the river of stars. A civilization was born in the valley of Boyne, charting time by my stars. Of course it wasn’t a punishment to give life- To become stars. There’s parts of you, out there, somewhere, They are still you, and one day, You will feel them too.”

Lock Howe grew up in rural Tennessee in a conservative, Baptist area. Raised atheist and liberal, Lock struggled with feelings of isolation and confusion, themes that are prominent in their writing. After high school, they studied creative writing at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina, where they had two pieces published in the college literary journal. Still living in Southern Appalachia, Lock is constantly inspired by nature. As they have delved into their own spirituality, separate from atheism or Christianity, and investigated their own gender identity, they have translated this into writing.

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