Space, In Chains by Laura Kasischke

Author:Laura Kasischke
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781619320093
Publisher: Copper Canyon Press

Atoms on loan

for Bill

The eyelid of a stone in my hand

flutters, and then it opens. I say, Hello?

For a moment, I was a woman with her son standing under an arch made of ancient rocks in Scotland. (You took the photo.)

For an hour in 1981 I was a girl with drunken hair in a swaying tower.

For a month or two in my twenties I paddled a boat made of lead down a river of blood with my hands.

Once, I stood on a mountaintop gulping air from a cup made of that thin stuff. I drank so much I even drank the cup.

And, all that time, my bare feet in love with the ground. My green grapes scaling my green wall. My kite tangled in the highest wires, and something electrified into fire inside me.

And you, my shining Viking. You, my Viking’s shining shield. You arguing with some other wife in some previous existence. The ivy splitting straight through the bricks. The children screaming obscenities on the beach. My father dragging on this lit cigarette for a century. Our son when he slips into the shadows of his classroom:

Maybe we can still hear his laughter, but we can’t see him.

Who are we? Without one another,

who were we? Without one another,

who will we be?

Water washing away the flowers.

Flowers being taught how to speak.

You’ll always remember me, my mother said, but someday you’ll no longer be sad about me.

How could she have been so wrong?

How did she know?

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