ELEGY TO SELVES
SARAH BROCKHAUS
Tuck the dishes in the cabinets softly, slow so
they don’t clink. Leave
the body sitting at the kitchen table, the one who has learned
to wait. You don’t have to
be this one. We never reveled in resignation, show me
worlds where we aren’t shifting. This existence is two-
fold: one made, one given. There are so many kinds
of staying. You can cough this one up, weren’t we
supposed to be filled by now? Maybe
I want less. I am still collapsing for my mother, still wondering
why I can’t reach her through the mirror. How distorted
we’ve become, how silly everything we stutter through
the phone. I still plead for this like I haven’t lived
in language long enough to speak
out loud. I have tried so many ways of hiding
this body and all of them still feel like skin.
- - - - - - - - -
Sarah Brockhaus has poems published in North American Review, Roanoke Review, Sugarhouse Review, New South and elsewhere. They are an MFA student at LSU and a co-editor of The Shore Poetry.