The age-dry skull in the collage is not
intact — jawbone, teeth, eye sockets
fractured, upside-down and tilted
on no known axis — the edges ripped
along the fontanelles. Split apart.

Within us, there are vacuums. Voids.
Places we dare not look. Kriko takes
a candle to search for the bits. 
A torch is too harsh. She wants
the stirrup from the ear. She wants
to hear the voices, the enduring songs,
myths that have outlived breakage.

She sculpts the old visions,
re-births the forgotten, the tossed-
away. She renders becoming.
Collage. Montage. Juxtaposition.

The pieces overlap like crossing
a threshold. There are gaps. There
are chapters left out. Spaces
too dark — better left alone. Ghosts
rise from those cracks, asking
questions. Kriko tries to catch them.
Stories renewed, they scatter.

You could call them wind or prayer.

[Dual citizen of the Republic of Ireland and the United States, D. Walsh Gilbert lives in Farmington, Connecticut on a former sheep farm at the foot of Talcott Mountain in the watershed of the Farmington River — the original homelands of the Tunxis peoples near the oldest site of human occupation in Connecticut, dating back 12,500 years. Most recently, she published Finches in Kilmainham and Misneach (Grayson Books, 2024), and forthcoming, no mother but the sky (The Poetry Box, 2025). She serves with Riverwood Poetry Series and is co-editor of Connecticut River Review. 

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/debra.gilbert.71697/

Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/wannabeinireland/

BlueSky:  https://bsky.app/profile/dwalshgilbert.bsky.social]