𝖆𝖓𝖆𝖍𝖎𝖉

Courtney Marie Andrews, from Old Monarch: Poems; “Watercolor”

I’d spend the first one drowning

feel the water seep into my lungs

stealing my oxygen and stripping my breath

maybe after I become unconscious,

I’d find peace and would no longer fear the ocean.

I could spend the rest if my eight lives living by the water,

living with no fears.

For my next two I’d spend each one with my parents,

living in their shadows,

learn their deepest secrets and listen to their regrets,

just so I don’t fuck up lives four through nine.

I’ll hold their hands gently and watch them take their last breath.

In my fourth life

I’ll run away, I’ll run away from myself,

the person I cannot change, because I am still too naive to understand that

I am all the things that are wrong with me.

I’ll chase butterflies and try to find myself,

I’ll look at all the wrong places, wrong cities, wrong people

and before I know what I’ve ran through three of my nine lives.

My seventh life

I’ll listen to my parents advice,

I’ll work a 9 to 5, make a stable income,

settle down with a man I’m not sure I’m in love with

but he’s a good father to my children.

We will have a white picket fence, red door and a big fluffy dog,

one that barks at the mailman.

For my eight life,

I’ll live it alone, I’ll write books,

live in a little apartment in New York City.

Spend my days writing in a cafe around the block from where I live,

and drink wine before bed.

I’ll do yoga and eat clean and have an occasional cigarette off my balcony.

I’ll raise a cat by myself and he’ll watch me take my last breath before my last life.

In my final life

I’ll look for you

I’ll wait at bus stops

move back to our hometown,

try and find you at a shitty dive bar and write letters I’ll never send,

I’ll realise that after living eight lives

something was missing,

going about life without the person I loved made it all seem meaningless,

but I don’t have nine lives,

I just have this one,