Friday, March 23, 2018

day FOUR HUNDRED and TWENTY EIGHT

LOCAL BORDERLINE BLOWS UP BOYFRIEND’S PHONE, RUINS EVERYTHING

everything is too much today. last night
you said you couldn’t handle me and now
the whole world prods at the emptiness.

at what point is it no longer a pit
and just my own stomach? the story
goes you were too sick to answer, yet
i imagine myself a dog in a rainstorm
who’s been locked out of the house.

i read and reread the poem you wrote me, try
to turn these words into arms,
your arms, that little scrunch
before you kiss me. i read it over
and over and try to remind myself
it’s only a poem, try to remember
crying myself to sleep last night,
how when i sprayed your cologne to evoke you
you never appeared. i try to tell myself
there are no love potions, no magic,
that even soulmates disappoint each other.

but then you text back, an echo that says
this hole has a bottom. and i wonder if you
smell the rain on me, if you know
your name on my screen feels like “walk”
would sound, how i want you
to wrap me in a light blue bath towel,
fluff me to death with reassurance, say
this will never happen again.

but at some point, i have to put my tongue away.

- Kat Giordano



I’M AFRAID

it’s 1:05 AM on a work night
and I’m afraid to write a poem.
I’m afraid of finding out
the version of me who worries
about it being 1:05 AM on a work night
is not very good at writing poems.

i’m worried that a poem isn’t like a bicycle
but a family dog
and if you come home from a hard day at work
and forget to lock the gate,
it’ll charge off
down the block
and never find its way back.

i have forgotten to lock the gate every single day for a month
and i’m afraid to go into the backyard.

so I don’t.

i shut the curtains and the weeds
snake up the side of the house,
strangle the gutters, strangle everything.

eating honey roasted peanuts in bed
as the shoots overtake the windows,
i feel something a little like lightness
and close my eyes with weird acceptance
for the day the tendrils curl in fists
around the latches and none of them
will open.

- Kat Giordano

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