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Friday, December 21, 2012

Poem of the Week: Separation, Ariana D. Den Bleyker

I am wrecked: you have always been
like a schooner in the distance.
I no longer dream of conquest,
my heart an anchor. Where the air
is thin, I breathe for you. I watch
you hold a bag of frozen peas
to your swollen eyes. The way
you drift awkwardly towards me,
like snow, your color might as well
dance, tiptoe on the strings tying us
to the moon. Ships become memory.
Yet you float away. When I first met
you, I knew I would not miss you. And I don't.
And, if you said I was lucky,
I would slap you. But, if you refused
to speak to me, I would kiss you,
readily return to you, let you write
your name, file it, chisel it, clamp it
onto my heart with a pair of pliers.
I misuse the word separation, as though
it were an answer to your struggles,
not questions. Nothing remains
of the captured spark. I remember
you making banana splits at the kitchen
counter. We stared at each other,
imagining less complicated things.
Separation: that which is an intervening
space, a means of division. The bananas
slice carefully into halves and so you
split too, separating us from the many
flavors and textures competing
for our attention. I watch the end
of your suffering begin with your first
unaltered breath, a small song
of annihilation in a world I hold so dear.

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