This is how we became:
the stone ceiling a flicker of candle-flame
from our faces.
We learned a kind of magic,
a spell of charcoal, that spills like words across the cave walls,
weaving stories on dark mid-winter nights.
The long-horned elk,
the barrel-chested aurochs,
the slender, flighty gazelle,
the hoary-maned carmargues,
mapped like constellations in a stone sky.
We pressed our painted palms to the wall,
handprints overlaid like feathers
kept safe in their cool, stone ossuary
for you to later find
and lay your own hand over,
fingertips aligned
with the hands that made myth, tamed fire.
boats against the current 