Afraid So

- Jeanne Marie Beaumont

Is it starting to rain?
Did the check bounce?
Are we out of coffee?
Is this going to hurt?
Could you lose your job?
Did the glass break?
Was the baggage misrouted?
Will this go on my record?
Are you missing much money?
Was anyone injured?
Is the traffic heavy?
Do I have to remove my clothes?
Will it leave a scar?
Must you go?
Will this be in the papers?
Is my time up already?
Are we seeing the understudy?
Will it affect my eyesight?
Did all the books burn?
Are you still smoking?
Is the bone broken?
Will I have to put him to sleep?
Was the car totaled?
Am I responsible for these charges?
Are you contagious?
Will we have to wait long?
Is the runway icy?
Was the gun loaded?
Could this cause side effects?
Do you know who betrayed you?
Is the wound infected?
Are we lost?
Will it get any worse?

Baptism

Your body is a church whose doors close to me
I’m waiting on your steps trying not to tremble
I don’t know any other place that I can go and pray inside of
And so I still when I’m close to you
Sometimes my skeleton shivers electric
And why sometimes I shudder heavy in this heavy coat called [mine/my?]
When I was a boy I heard this song of a God on my bedroom floor
Singing out from between hands clasped tight as a lock
Your memory carries a similar tune
For the ghost of your heart is a holy place and as most holy places are
When you hold me inside of it I feel like a child
We are plates of sorrow, polishing ourselves off
I have my mouth sitting open with nothing but this shaking
Shaking inside from being so close to your feathers that I know
Why the wind goes and comes back
And I know how awkward the weather vane feels in its iron throat
That all it can do to announce the footsteps of kings is to spin and spin and spin
In the blue of your eyes I feel small
I feel big enough to touch a myth
Your skin baptized me and I’ve been trying to find my way back to that river
I don’t know any other place to go and pray inside of

- Anise Mojgani

Empty

King Friday XIII: And now who is arriving at this castle? Will the guests never stop?

- Mister Roger's Neighborhood

Secret Doors

“We had never known her. They had brought us here to find that out.”
- The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides

Joy

Nirrimi Joy Akanson

You shall no longer take things second or third hand... nor look through the eyes of the dead... nor feed on spectres in books,

You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,

You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.

- Walt Whitman, Song Of Myself

Death

“You know, there is no one alive now who was grown-up when I was a child. So I, as a child, am dead. Some day soon, perhaps in forty years, there will be no one alive who has ever known me. That’s when I will be truly dead—when I exist in no one’s memory. I thought a lot about how someone very old is the last living individual to have known some person or cluster of people. When that old person dies, the whole cluster dies, too, vanishes from living memory. I wonder who that person will be for me. Who whose death will make me truly dead?”
- Love’s Executioner: “Three Unopened letters,” Dr. Irvin D. Yalom

Talking Back

Your voice in the house
That used to be empty
Silent walls when I would
Call
Now there are lost echoes
From you