Rummy Park, 22
(To You in the Future)

by Rebecca Lu Kiernan

You are my leaf green, slow motion,
Honey textured world,
Silk to the fingers,
Dizzying to the head,
Sweet on the tongue,
You are adored.

And when my hands
Are long amputated from your chest,
I will not fold my hands in prayer
Without feeling your heartbeat
Faintly inside.

Let’s get this out of the way
In advance
Of ice skies
And razor grey rain,
Before detectives are hired
And the firing squad takes aim.

Please know that an angel hovers
Breathless above you
Beseeching that you
Be so loved again.
You are my sea foam green,
Merry-go-roundish,
Terraforming world,
Making something habitable
Out of shipwreck scraps
And alien waters.

How slowly will time pass
On your next planet
Of red plutonium skies
And black volcano beaches?
How goes the dirty war,
Psy ops and emotional camouflage?

You take my hologram
To wake you after cold sleep.
Will we make translucent love
Long after I am under grass?

Time doesn’t fly for me
Pacing the halls of our hexagon home,
Stroking the new pet
Under grey silk sheets.
Stars are surely falling
If, even, he dreams
Of the you-less world.

Is this a poet’s progress?
Drowning out candles
For the shadows our love
Still casts against
These eggshell walls?

When you jettisoned
You erased almost all of me.
All that remains is so stitched
With your affection
That I now come apart
In the terrible ways
That you were always falling.
All the unknowable secrets
So ugly, so clean.

I surrender to the lions
Who deliver my nights
In threads the blue-black
Of a bruise
Between their fangs and claws.
What was here
Can never be
And if it did
Would never find me,
The ridiculous faces,
Desperate places
I’ll still be looking
For you.