The Room, My Mind
Cordelia Albertson
I can’t write songs for you, anymore.
No poetry could cancel
My shameful hatred
Knocking at the door.
We met before
I grew into
My monstrosity.
We met before
I haunted my
Own mind, spiraled
Into a blindness
Beyond blindness
That had me clawing
At the walls.
You walk past me
Without walking
Beyond your room,
But your scent hits,
Ever stronger,
My weakened knees.
Doubled over,
I wait, patient,
For patient gloom,
And feel blood rush
From my head
Into my pleas:
Just leave me be
And forget these,
My thoughtful words,
To see that you
Have shaken this,
Our dust,
From your shoulders
And I have not…
For I still haunt
The room, my mind,
Where you left it.
*
The Picture on My Wall
Heaven Lane
The only picture on my wall is of her. Her face is young, but her fitted overcoat hints at curves and she holds herself with the confidence of a woman. A mischievous smile plays on her lips and her eyes sparkle with unrestrained joy. So different from the woman who raised me. The pictured woman is a patch of wildflowers to my grandmother’s meticulously cultivated rose garden. Yet to experience a lifetime of love and sorrow, pride and regret, strength and suffering, she is a half-finished masterpiece. The picture on my wall is beautiful, but I know that one day she will be radiant.
*
Origami
Ava Phillips
I will take pictures by the little house, green
and moody as me.
I will bite the heads off blue geraniums, my
glorious mouth like a bruised
paper crane.
I will coat my nails in laquer by the
wide window, next to the potted fern that
speaks Greek.
I will hang half poems on the kitchen walls, dry
rosemary and thyme on the bitter windowsills.
I will wear the white dress on the lawn, take
photos in film with the tortoiseshell cat in
my arms, her eyes
on the doves.
I will let my hair grey, pull it out
by the fistful and leave strands on the branches
of the plum tree for crows to find.
I will wake in blue silk in a mahogany bed frame, the
only parts of me left uncovered
my jealous wrists.
I will bake small apples, red and perfect
as sin, and eat them in the garden, warm with
summer heart rot.
I will tend to the hedges, but not the oak tree.
My sister.
I will let her reach as far as she wishes, let
her shatter my windows with her tender rough fingers,
if she likes.
I will let her grow wild.
