Pompeii

Claire Beeli, United States

I don’t know how

to tell you this. I still pull

the butterfly-stiff bodies

up to seated on the sofa. I won’t breathe

if it might rustle their hair. Do you remember

the sound of their bones

snapping back into place? It always

reminded me of you. Of popping

knuckles and broad ribcages and charcoal

dust. I still pose in case I won’t move again.

I won’t let them find me curled,

like that statue I dreamed about,

under you.

I understand what it’s like to watch

the lava roll over itself

like a centipede. To feel heat

build against my skin as the fires fall

into me like rain. The yellow, hot and fast as tears.

The ruby, patient, kind. My muscles are still taut

but my hands are useless. The birds

have all fled. I remember the curled statues

and feel the weightlessness of my skin, even

as the heat contracts over me. We should have left

the bodies where they fell. We should have left

the bones. I don’t want them

to find me like this—petrified.

Claire Beeli is an emerging writer from Long Beach, California. Her work is published or forthcoming in fingers comma toes, Rill and Grove, and The Apprentice Writer, among others. She is her city's 2023-2024 Youth Poet Laureate. Her writing has been recognized by the Scholastic Foundation, Columbia College Chicago, The New York Times Learning Network, and others.