i get lost / i get low

whenever she tells me about J the child in me takes notice. so many of us were the type of kids who were scared of the dark.

*

we circle the neighbourhood together but the school is gone, another one of T’s torn down landmarks taking the shape of a big dirt hole.

J’s old house still stands despite the fire, an unremarkable survivor.

*

something like this: his mom working the late shift again, J and the candle between the cushions, the glow barely dispelling what scared him, pushing it away but still around him and only getting closer the heavier his eyes.

*

When I go back there its ethan i see, sitting on my bed playing with the ancient stuffed animal of the dead chimpanzee.

“how do you know it’s dead?” “look at its eyes.”

i see his brown mop of hair, getting caught up in the irregular swirls on the crown of his head as he stares carefully at the old vintage toy my grandmother gave me when I was 8 years old.

ethan thumbs his pearl grey eyes carefully and i tell him, “they used to be white with black centres for his pupils, but one morning i found him like this and i knew that he died.”

“oh,” ethan says, spoken in a whisper, as we do for the asleep, sick, or dead.

every so often it will catch me off guard. like accidentally making eye contact with your own reflection, that startled sense of recognition, that’s what happens sometimes when i see photos of my mother as a little girl.

*

all my life she was kicking me out of her house for one reason or another, ferociously calling my father on the phone to come pick me up. and he would, the car idling at the side of the street, me going out to his car still crying, my backpack in hand for the impromptu night spent at dad’s.

*

the thing is, you run from these things or you’re pushed. “don’t come home.” that was my mother the last time. the yellow glow from my father’s porch lighting me all the way up.

in summers we don’t realize how happily we play in graveyards

man-made lakes being more sinister, i used to imagine thousands of cool, bloodless hands

writhing from the false bottom like weeds

but its the winter months to watch out for— the glacial empty days where the lake

becomes nothing but miles of flat glass, a hushed pasture for bodies

baby i knew you were special the moment you came outta me with that horn growing forlorn from the back of your head.

precious as anything, screaming like god, wrapped up in my blood and guts you came out astonishing,

The whole city went dark, but it wasn’t just our city. It was half the country, all because of some power plant in Michigan. That summer was an airless broil and a plague of lady bugs crawled over every surface. When the power went out, I remember Rob filling the tub with bathwater—just in case. He had done the same thing during Y2K. He told me if the power never came back we’d be eating from soup cans. I was pre-school aged and disgusted, imagining spooning out clumps of tomato paste from the pried open lid of a desiccated Campbell’s.

Everything has been about Caves. We remember them.

In the dark shadow of my apartment I think, this is a cave. The rain follows. Everything about CaveWork necessitates dampness.

We become locked from stone, a wide field of bison just out of our reach.

What do we do? Well the eye turns inward.

Pressing an ear to the walls of the heart, trying to listen for the great Echo, collecting our animal fat brightness and mixing into the greater distance.

that stunning communion yr after yr with the trees

blossoming like there’s never been any danger

u begin by remembering what it must have been like, in another time