Poetry: “Non-” by Britt Canty

Non-

Boundaries. We need boundaries, you said. You were nothing if not a man of reason. My fingers raked the cement, still clay-like. I wanted to leave an impression before it turned solid. Before you left. Shards of shell and rock crowded into the skin beneath my nails. I tried to write my name so that everyone would know I had been there. So that you would remember.

You took my ravaged hands, pretended to understand. I was most beautiful to you when I was vulnerable, coffined in the lines drawn to separate what was yours from

what was mine. Night by night I was becoming unknown, a nonentity—the non sequitur in the story you told. You tried to bury me in your cemetery of non-

But now, when you reach for my hips, my hair
at the latest hour,
I am gone,

unbound—

gone to where the ghosts of my ancestors
still race on horseback,

gone into the soft edges of the winged
horizon, awash in color, water,

 

and light.

Britt Canty received her MFA in Creative Writing from The New School. Her writing has appeared in New Plains Review, Bookanista, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, The Rising Phoenix Review, and other places. She lives in Queens.

Check out HFR’s book catalog, publicity list, submission manager, and buy merch from our Spring store. Follow us on Instagram and YouTube.