The bird

I saw the bird
heard
its high pitched trill
when I thought of a bird it’s what I saw
autumn
its cold-warm glow
the wind burnt my wet hair
or that’s how it seemed then
four years after the cat died
or rather,
was put out of her misery
in a room where nothing grew
it was late in the evening
hunger
no appetite we tasted the
bile at the
back of our
throats
death was uneventful
but the bird
flittered under my arm when I thought of it
disappeared into the thicket
in that shaded corner of town
months before I walked the crescent
glancing into the old houses
catching wafts of rose-tinted air
the Near East in the north
it always comes back again.
those petals were dew glazed and sweet
the bird came later when the flowers were gone
wet fir trees stirred
everything else garden mulch
and stone

The Heron

whenever I think of
the heron
I think of
the girl who traced the
playground
that now feels like a graveyard
hovered around its seams
weightless
elated
she stood on one leg
forgot to pray
or rather
thought her fasting
a kind of devotion
at the altar overlooking
the precipice
I wanted to be possessed by the
same demoness
or was she a haunting
or a feeling
or a spirit fuelled by light and air
a body
borrowed:
something to overcome
another mind-fuck myth:
mind and body cannot be separated
beyond the starving girl
the heron stands on one leg
waiting for some thing
or other

Elizabeth Sulis Kim is an Edinburgh-based writer. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, BBC Culture, Ambit, the LA Review of Books, the New Orleans Review, TANK, Stylist, Refinery29, Electric Literature, and Oh Comely, among others. She is the founding editor of Cunning Folk Magazine and edited Spiritus Mundi: Writings Borne from the Occult.