“Had I not created my whole world, I would certainly have died in other people’s.”
The only worlds I’ve ever learned to live in
were all given to me by people who were just
doing their best to get by. Every tongue in which
I’m fluent was taught to me by someone
who didn’t know how to speak
honestly.
Every word demands an autopsy,
every glance a question. I swallow
my silence and it tastes like gold.
In Spanish my name is a command form
of the verb, “to close, to shut.” In braille
my vertebrae read “have mercy.” I write
odes better than sonnets. The Julia set
makes me cry.
Life is a strange magic that often ends
in vanishing. Like they say, every firearm
has a safety. So we must aim
to do better. I am determined
to discover a point of entry
which doesn’t create
new wounds.
I await healing
to once again visit me
with miracles like balloons that will
be there for me to wake up to
tomorrow. But I know enough
to know better, so I keep myself
occupied. I drive alone at night. I fold
cooling hands and wonder
what the most incredible thing
they ever did was.
My hands—pruned
and blistered as they are—are always
making better and better mistakes
than yesterday. I withdraw,
remembering what I’ve said
about remembering.
Every intersection crosses with nostalgia.
Every apartment complex is an old number
whose door will not open for me anymore.
Every neon sign a good story,
every cemetery a reunion.
What is the opposite of a haunting?
Where does life end? When the spotted, arthritic
fingers of pestilence rob me of breath, I recall each time
I’ve survived without something seemingly vital and figure,
“What’s one more?”
The darkness moans my name, calling out for me
to let it wear me even thinner. You jaw thrust our union
again and again, begging with and in the only tongue we
both know to cease in its endless varieties
of obstruction. Your fingers ache
like my sternum must. But
there is no language I will not learn
to tell someone that
I love them.
Cierra Lowe, 2024