Animals: “A Penguin’s Prayer” by Elena Sichrovsky

 A Penguin’s Prayer

put me out on a slab of white
let the long shards of wind
cradle the stretch of 
my body too stiff to bend

i was soft once. 
i was wet in the sea of a womb, i swam
out into a much bigger ocean
my mouth spoke bubbles, the air
sang them back to me

i was loved once.  
i was held in a dream of feathers, i fed
from a tangle of chewed ribbons
my eyes drank the water, the tide
sank the sky in me

put me out on a slab of gray
let the wind mourn me
the way you never will, o
mother of my frozen breath

About Elena Sichrovsky

Elena Sichrovsky is an Austrian-Tawainese writer living in Shanghai, China. She’s an active part of the writing community there and is a long-time member of the Inkwell Fiction Workshop. Her work has been published in SciPhi Journal, Black Telephone Magazine, Stone of Madness Press, and Mud Season Review, among others. Through her writing she hopes to find the beauty in the terrifying and the terror in the beautiful. You can follow her on Instagram @elenitasich or Twitter @thesoundbtween.