Solstice
Destined
to remember
the sun will
still set on the
longest day
of the year
Time/ how the ticking of a clock can only exist right now/ broken clocks/ the stop of such permanence/ the fragility of time/ the fragility of loving him/ the fragility of him loving me/ the tick of the clock between us/ how quickly the sun rises/ how quickly it sets into darkness/ how yesterday slips from my memory/ how quickly my touch becomes his/ how quickly his fingertips vanish/ the silence after a belly-aching laugh/ when I realize how rare that kind of joy is/ and how I always forget to cherish it/ watching the people I love/ realizing how much I’m going to miss them/ forgetting to miss them while they’re still here/ watching the people I love disappear from my life/ watching the people I love die/ hearing a recording of my parents’ voices/ and not recognizing their laughs/ being the last one to say goodbye/ longing/ how I always need more/ how I can touch what I want/ but never hold it the way I need to/ never knowing what I truly want/ never knowing if I’m the one standing in my own way/ freedom/ the weight of having to choose it/ being trapped/ the smothering comfortability of it/ when a word is stuck on the tip of my tongue/ but my mind doesn’t know how to shape it/ how that must be what growing older feels like/ forgetting/ how it comes so easily and stays so long/ being the first to remember/ and the last to forget
On a cold morning
barely-risen sun washed
dense fog into moonstone
blues deep and frost
I met a dormant moth
with wings the pattern
of the branch I sensed
a wind I could not feel
so slightly the wing stirred
Nine keepers and their families lived there
no electricity,
no plumbing
no neighbors
no road in or out.
White painted bricks,
Habakkuk stood on the watchtower
complaining to God because the people were evil,
no good,
dirty,
rotten,
shiftless,
no-account
scoundrels and ne’er-do-wells.
(Tell me what you really think, Habakkuk.)
They rob the poor,
starve the hungry,
murder the innocent.
Why do they get away with it?
It’s God’s job to fix them!
Habakkuk wrote it all down
while he waited on the watchtower to see what God would do.
For twenty years he watched from the roof of the highest tower
until his eyes grew old and tired,
until he saw God’s answer come
over the horizon
a swift destroying army
from every direction.
I think everyone
hates me. I trauma dumped. I
really needed help.
the bottle—
promised
relief.
thick.
sweet.
chemical red
(a silver spoon’s salvation)
I tilted it back
like Communion
for a God I yearned to answer.
my throat
burned.
I mumbled
something half-prayer,
half-profane—
not to be healed
just
to sleep-
For a night of relief.
the sickness needed soothing.
you offered sugar.
not cure.
coated tongue
vows whispered soft as syrup—
“just a little more.”
I swallowed.
and you watched.
drunk
on devotion.
numb
to the rot.
now,
even silence
tastes like cherry.
