salvage

BY RACHEL MCKIBBENS

I have learned to need the body
I spent years trying to rid the world of

have learned to cherish its pale rebel hymn
warped by ghost heat, carried, carried

by all my loyal dead. I have learned
to crawl backward into the wilderness

to ask, to eat, to steep in your gentleness. 
Let this be where I permit forgiveness

to know your name, to leave our cruelest years
where & how we need them most—

                                                       behind & unlit. 

I believe what the poem is trying to say is the authuor trying to salvage her life and rebuild themself. I