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Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 3688 Registered: 11-1998 |
Honorable Mention The Others Laurie Byro 1 When my father embraced me as a child, I thought I was in heaven. How awkward we were with each other. When not on the lake, he was all neck and back. We glided like a fancy carriage. I understood he only appeared to me in feathers. I forgave him for raping my mother. We each have our own story to tell. My sister was a beauty even as a child, when I was born. How easy for a woman to hatch an egg? My mother squatted, screaming when I came out. She said I was covered in a white sticky frosting that made her believe I was an egg gone bad. A human can gaze at the stars, not burst upon a night sky. My siblings burst, I was the darkness they glittered against. 2 My love’s lover has eyes the color of chlorinated water. When he goes to the pool and swims laps, she floats beneath, lulling him in sleepy silence. She makes me wet with a jealousy that’s part fear, part loathing. When we have sex, they enter my mind. I float on the buoyancy of his body. His bad boy bashfulness brings me to the edge and back. I feel her eyes on us, blue ice, 28 degrees Fahrenheit. They chide me until finally I come. I have my own sin to spend. 3 Those who have lived here before us have walked these forests, feet sticky with summer. grass licking their ankles. We sit and write poems about an owl moon, a snow moon, a lady slipper moon. There is an amber haze on the pond today. Goldenrod fills with dragonflies mating. They quiver when they enter the body of the other, and they fly unseparated. The pond becomes ghostly with a white haze. I want to tell them about you. I want to separate them and be unchanged. |
