What I Left Behind

I. 

They speak of memories, progress, and calculations, but

you’d rather think of art in its purest form.  

Heads down on desks, we are

up and around in clumps, maybe, or on number lines,

looking like mice,

frantically burrowing in the earth.

Charismatic only in the smallest of spaces.

Wrap me up in sheets and sheets

because I keep on having dreams where

I mistake you for strangers and broken umbrellas.  

II. 

Little deaths of pointers and pinkies that fit in your pocket.

That moment when you realize that shoes 

don’t have anything to do with feet and you need a ruler, 

a straightedge, to keep your shoulders in line because you’re 

a hoarder of minutes and of hours 

when you felt like you existed 

and when you stretch them out over days to keep from 

disappearing 

you are a tightrope walker but most days 

you are trapped within. 

Most days your vision is gripped by sheets of 

lined paper

and you lose yourself in the contours of these lines.

You find pieces of yourself in their trash 

(empty paper bags like featureless puppets) and, 

in the chewing of pens 

and fidgeting of fingers, the picking of fingernails,

you find repose.

III.

I like to watch them drink their drinks:

Vodka poured from glass to aluminum.

Don't throw stones,

don't fold up your bones.

At least not yet, not now

when winter's pulse is much too hard to find

and our throats are peeling.

Now that I've forgotten the cat’s cradle

and how to braid my fingers through

those shredded shoelaces, and

stretch myself out and into

the arms of somebody warm.

"Jumping tastes so good,"

they tell me with muddled eyes and

lucid smiles and

beads around their wrists.

I hug myself.

IV. 

People look into her

eyes like chopping down trees.

She tries to find a comfortable skin to crawl into

the husk of a familiar longing.  

Daylight savings has her fidgeting,

painting gluttony on the walls because

she never feels more herself than

when the water is trickling

But for the most part

she’s an amputee

never trusting her own lips or ears.

Her body betrays her and she strings

sacrifices and sympathy into necklaces, 

The only way she knows how to love people is with her eyes

as if there are ghosts inside her that

have something to say.  

If you looked close enough

perhaps you’d see her mantra tugging at

the corners of her lips: 

you are here.

by ABBY SULLIVAN