TO THE MOST TOXIC
PUBLISHED POETRY INCLUDED IN MY FORTHCOMING COLLECTION: LETTERS TO NOWHERE
the blame for this sits next to you on the nightstand unopened,
between the brass lamp and the room service menu.
we both know, without speaking, you will never pick it up.
what can i see with my eyes closed,
stranded in this moment? i am the woman
you do not love well, for reasons you later regret.
i am the woman hung between mirrors,
eyes masking the likenesses, contemplative
yet unable to shake myself awake,
crying, alice! alice! to my reflection,
deciding which echo to shatter and scar myself with
and which image to bathe in, to wash your sweat from my body.
it’s summer in indiana. nothing’s clean. but outside,
a woman with brightly painted lips walks across
the street in high heels that look like midnight.
up close they must be eel or snakeskin,
and i wonder if she is luckier than i am—
if she has someone who hears her.
what that must feel like—
to have important words.
i stand naked, keeping these thoughts folded
to my chest, rocking them like an infant.
where you will never see them, warming my shoulder
on the seventh-floor window, the residue of my skin
casting a slight, peppery dimness on the glass.
i want to be alive inside that shadow—
inside its smallness. its radius is safe
and away from you and the noise you make
screaming your laughter. away from the place
where i stand on the edge of you and see myself—
a trivial, insignificant, but expected guest
in the fragmented minds of you, the space
where i avert the burn and collect the embers
for remembrance. a man in dirty black jeans sits down
on a box near a woman selling roses. i begin to sway
with the purr of the saxophone, as it brushes past me
like a cat articulating an honest, melancholy tone,
swimming through the stagnancy and the small opening
in the window, entering my shadow on the wall
and filling the space between the mirrors
with truth like smoke.
Originally published in Emotional Alchemy Mag as “Indiana” March 2020 (print)
