“In the middle of the charnel ground . . . we can finally contemplate groundlessness.”  —Pema Chodron

I.

Our mothers do us a grave injustice,

telling us we’re special,

that our drawing is the best

in our kindergarten class,

that we are the prettiest,

the smartest, the kindest. 

That everyone will like us 

if we’re nice to them.

We’re not. Everyone will not.

Our mothers could as easily have said:

worst, meanest, ugliest, most damned.

It’s a shock many of us cannot bear,

going forward only as ghosts

of who we thought we were.

II.

At the charnel ground 

all these spent years later,

I tiptoe over the remains 

of my earlier self.  

Picked-at bone and muscle, tendons

stretched and rent, wind

shuffling the dead cells

of my tragically thin skin.

Jackals skulk nearby, wait to tear me

apart from the girl I studied

in the mirror of my mother’s words. 

Vultures shadow the sky, cracked

earth strewn with entrails, eyeballs,

glistening shreds of gristle.

 “Awakening in the Charnel Ground,” continued

There lies my heart on a cold stone—

it’s beating still, just a little.

It won’t last long. And soon, surely,

the hurt will be gone. My mother’s false 

veneration long ago moldered to dust.

III.

I remove myself to catch my breath,

short moments again and again, 

then step back into the rotting mess,

offering what flesh persists. 

My larynx ripped out by a crow

at the top of a cypress,

who dissembles my unspoken words

in a raspy lungful of air.

This feels like sips of bitter poison

that torment but don’t quite kill 

while a different me hovers

above the consumption of truth.

No groveling or exaggeration, 

just stepping in and out until

I can stomach it longer and longer.

No sorrow: only the invisible me 

left there raw and exposed, 

opening and opening 

like a red bloom.

Cathy Ann Kodra is a past associate editor for MSI Press and Iris Publishing Group and a past contributing editor for New Millennium Writings. Her work has appeared in various publications, including Blueline, Literary Mama, Potomac Review, RHINO, Still: The Journal, and Whale Road Review. Kodra won the LMU George Scarbrough Prize for Poetry in 2016 and the Tennessee Mountain Writers 2018 Poetry Contest. Her first full poetry collection, Under an Adirondack Moon, was released by Iris Press in October 2017. She is currently working on a second poetry collection, a first short story collection, and various essays.