May/Post-December
These days, I only date the dead.
The thing about dead people is that they’re
—not resigned, exactly; perhaps
accepting. There’s something
about having already slid off this
mortal coil that makes it easier;
having suffered the ultimate
disappointment, nothing I do
can really ruin them so badly.
It takes the pressure off. No rush
when the worst has already happened.
The veil, crossed, mutes things—
maybe that’s what makes my faint,
gray-mist kind of love fit better
on the already six-feet-under.
Skin, breath, heartbeat; whatever
physical presence I have,
in our bed, you say that’s enough.
When you leave, I sweep up grave dirt;
before that, I make breakfast:
me, two poached eggs and milky coffee;
you, the blackest coffee I can brew,
so dark and pungent you can just about
smell it. You inhale the steam and say
you love me. Whatever warmth you feel,
beyond everything, is enough
to say it back.
You Can(‘t) Go…
Three o’clock on a Sunday afternoon:
My phone tells me, unprompted,
that if I left now I’d get home
9:30 PM tomorrow. Light traffic.
Problem: I’m already home,
sitting on the bed in my apartment.
Open it up, and see it’s trying
to send me back to California,
my childhood address.
No one lives there anymore.
Or rather, someone I don’t know
lives there. My parents moved north
and east. So did I; same directions,
a hundred times further.
They say you can’t go home again.
Google Maps says: yes, you can.
It’s a day and seven hours of driving,
of course, and there’s nothing left
for you there, but you could try it;
an old, broken instinct, like sea turtles
going back to the beaches where
they were born, hoping there will still be
a warm, soft place
to land.
Letter from Ogygia
She made the worst threat without
even meaning it; pillow talk,
mist-thin morning, about to melt
in sunlight. I could, she said,
make you immortal.
I don’t remember what I said.
I stared, for a moment, down
the barrel of eternity, in those
sheets, waking up wrists
tangled in that caramel hair.
I vomited in the back garden, after.
That is the closest I came
to throwing myself back on
Poseidon’s non-existent mercy,
just letting myself sink down
into the waves. The thing was that
down in Hades, I could hope,
at least, to see you again. I could
wait there, at the dock. I could
take you by the hand and help you
off the ferry boat. We could walk
through the asphodel, down
to the river, and drown
our old selves and surface,
blind, unknowing, but
together, into the next life.
the ends unwoven in
the ends unwoven in—strange
how the brain is programmed to
seek finality, find closure, in lives
undesigned for neat conclusions.
we play a finite number of times,
but never know the last one—no
final certainty to calculate back,
we can only assume that we will
go on forever.
the snow melts before the snowman
is finished. the scarf knit only so far—
someday, I will put it down, and someone
else will pick it up and bind it, weave in
the ends. maybe not the scarf—the last
dish in the sink, the poem half-written,
the melody with no chords under it. live
with the fact that it stops, someday,
mid-stream—live with the fact there will
be detritus of a life. someone else someday
will clean up after me, will find a thousand
things undone, incomplete,
unresolved
two kinds of ending things
Darling, of course it’s love.
No, I know, I don’t blame you—
or at least, don’t blame you the way
you don’t blame the cat when she
startles and pushes off, claws digging in.
She was just scared. She didn’t know
any better. Come, walk with me.
The zoo, the reptile house. I love
the pythons. Constrictors—curl around
and hold fast. Press in tight. Squeez.
Don’t let go. If you listen, you can hear
the little bones breaking. The loss
of breath. I love them, through the glass.
I love you, but I won’t let you get
your arms around me.
I know—it’s instinct, it’s fear.
Hold fast. Don’t let go. Your grip
a killing thing. I don’t blame you but
I am no little rat, gone soft and
still. I’m going. It squeaks a final
time. My bootsteps on the pavement.
You’re fine. You’ll be fine. I
breathe, deep
and gone.
Perspectives
I make coffee before I put on my glasses
and stand at the counter, squinting
out the window, trying to decide
if it’s raining,
like some half-formed little mole creature
unready for the sun.
These are the most honest moments
of the day, the morning still emerging
out of wet clay, the minutes when
you can still see the lines under the paint,
the stagehands slowly rolling up
the blue sky over the dark one
like so much wallpaper.
By the time I find my glasses,
it is definitely not raining but
still there is evidence:
the concrete darkened,
the grass damp, the ink still wet
on the world.
That’s hope, isn’t it,
that we are not finished–
when things get remade
every morning, there is still time
for the fruit to ripen, the dough
to rise, and someone to sweep
a brush through it all and paint
a better world.
Rachel Linton is a playwright, poet, and law student at the University of Chicago. Her poetry has previously appeared in Emerge Literary Journal, Strange Horizons, The Sunlight Press, anti-heroin chic, and Queer Toronto Literary Magazine, among others. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. You can find out more at rachellinton.com.
