Something Like Friends, Maybe, and: In Case We’re Separated
Rent from DeepDyve- Something Like Friends, Maybe, and: In Case We’re Separated
Something Like Friends, Maybe
Wet pavement. Such armor. Where tires heave then flatten. It was always in the dark, night that clutched the body fierce. We were never still,
so devoted to roadways. Beckoned by a dirge of nylon straps. Quarter notes.
A way to find our sea legs.
Such a brief ride home. Street light explained and explained our partings in sweeps of bronze. So many torches
crowding a worried wrist. In the end, an excuse to fold the heart between silvered ribs, still beating.
Briar and skin. Needle lace of branches, three Winters’ distance from the center line. All the shoulders frozen. [End Page 138]
In Case We’re Separated
Yesterday our bodies were sawdust. Knee deep in oak leaves and tail feathers, we watched my white husk of breath and words climb hover splay beneath clouds the shape of bones, the shape of mouths, and I knew I could never retrieve them.
Salt and wire, you said. Then my palm
was a splint, skin wrapped over maple skin. I warmed the tree years before it would take in the rope, felt the fold and flay of bark above nylon, and when your fingers touched my neck I felt nothing. The forest so beautiful it struck me across the chest, knocked the wind from my lungs. [End Page 139]
Joelee Dekker holds a degree in creative writing from Western Michigan University and works as a full-time manager at Michigan’s Adventure Amusement Park. She spends her free time hunting, laughing, and going barefoot. Her poems have appeared in journals such as Whiskey Island, Diagram, and Albatross.
