An excerpt from
Leaving the Island
by Talya Rubin
KNOWN LAND
These are cliffs for throwing oneself off of
my mother said madness ran
in the family.
We buried babies out at sea
mother’s milk run dry
a rattle of dead birds and the suckling
of bones, hardly a substitute.
This is a place for dying. The smoke
from peat fires chokes our
young, the songs we sing so old
they roll around our lungs
like disease.
We are insignificant here. Forgotten.
I want to send a message
in a mailboat with only my
name on it.
In hope that someone somewhere
in the world will know me.
Isn’t that why we live, to be known?
If there is a door in these stone
walls, let me at it
let me at it.
The imagined or the real
it doesn’t matter
anymore.