EVERYWHERE I WENT THAT SPRING, I WAS ALONE

lunchboxpoems:

In the single room of a bathtub, humming “Love 
Me Tender” to hear a sullen human 
voice. Then after,

fainting in slow motion to the tile. Succumbing 
to steam and waking, on my 
own, drowsy as a rose.

Mailing a letter and waiting, empty, beside a hornet’s 
thumb-small home, fit inside the lip 
of the mailbox. The hornet

each day startled less by the sudden thunder 
of the falling drawbridge, the cymbal 
of sunshine let in.

In the kitchen, beside the toaster, crying unabashedly 
into dishtowels as I timed my meal 
and kept company the cool

block of butter in its iridescent silver, the blunt 
knife, the beveled glass that carried 
my milk. Alone

when it began to hail one afternoon. A miracle 
suspending the cottage in darkness. Alone 
taking a photograph

of the glory and alone when the pearly 
melt returned the grass to ordinary June. Everywhere 
those months my nose buzzed

from crying. Quivered so unlike the hornet, pitiless 
in her work. Bleeding intermittently 
into my dress hem, how beautiful I became

then, ringed by brown flowers. More 
hornet than my hornet friend, alone in her own 
collapsing universe.

PAULA BOHINCE

titusandronicusonice:

Bertolt Brecht, “On the Suicide of the Refugee W.B.”

showmey0urfangs:

Jacob Anderson, photographed by Kevin Scanlon