fiona revill
Blood Still Smells Only of Blood
after Anna Akhmatova
But figs grow in the garden
musk of blackberry hangs marvelous, earthy
just beyond them. Sweet, milky-scented skin of three years old
(and milk teeth!),
zincy crisp of sunscreen: peals of laughter
sound as winter harp, playful
harmonizing old melancholies in the elder listener –
No. Today we are talking summers, seasons, scents:
like sunshine, bottled in clear salt water, stone-fruits and sunbaked soil
darling. Portended petrichor of previous clouds
emerges now in tandem alongside cloudless sky.
Even memory cannot make me shrink
from this gentle ephemera. Even memory of blood.
My skin (healed) all through percolating warmth, a freckled cosmos
and even worthless I can laugh here, too.
August promises sweetness, still –
and so do you
Fiona Revill is a writer, director, performer, and filmmaker, as well as the co-founder of Red Square Collective, Ltd. She is currently completing her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia, and is a former AFTRS film student. Her first feature film, WE THREE, which she both wrote and directed, is in post-production. Fiona is a survivor of complex trauma, and related themes feature heavily in her work. She thinks yoga and reading are the cure to *most* things.