Katelyn Gendelev

Please, remember this. There was a love and it was ours. It was ours.

IN THE UNIVERSE WHERE I NEVER LOVED YOU it didn’t snow today. David Mitchell has never been published. our hometown is currently uninhabitable due to unsafe conditions. my alternate self still believes that hands stitch you back together more often than they take you apart, and nobody wants to tell her the truth. so they don’t. she’s blissfully ignorant of the sound accompanying a dropped call, or how salty tears taste in the summertime. it’s eternally spring there, things are always growing. IN THE UNIVERSE WHERE I NEVER LOVED YOU none of my poems feel real. I don’t get published the first time or the second time because I don’t have to write for you. or about you. I’ve always confused the two of those things but in this world it doesn’t matter because all I’ve ever done is write for myself. not to say that IN THE UNIVERSE WHERE I LOVED YOU I haven’t been writing for myself. I have been. I’ve just needed to share that title, like waking up with next to no blanket due to the selfish cloud of past lovers taking up space at the foot of my bed. I know there’s warmth for me here. IN THE UNIVERSE WHERE I NEVER LOVED YOU I don’t know how to spell your last name because I’ve never had a reason to write it. cursive is obsolete. nobody tells me what school you go to & this fact doesn’t mean anything to me because you never meant anything to me. we wind up at the same bar some night and I don’t recognize you. you don’t recognize me. nobody is suffering because of this. we go on to live lives comfortably uncrossed. sometimes that’s possible. IN THE UNIVERSE WHERE I ALMOST LOVED YOU I can’t say the same. but that’s another story for another page in another journal. all of this to say that IN THE UNIVERSE WHERE I LOVED YOU I’m writing this poem and it doesn’t hurt. it takes me two days, a glass of boxed wine, and three different sweaters, but it doesn’t hurt. it doesn’t hurt. it doesn’t hurt.

she texts to tell me they’ve discovered seven new planets around some faraway star. that some might be habitable, says ‘maybe we can go there someday.   god knows i’ve had enough of this place.’ maybe on another planet, we hold hands and no one stares. maybe on another planet, i kiss you in public without fear. maybe on another planet, this wild longing finally comes home to nest in our hands.   so my heart says yes, love, let’s run away, scratch the sky with our desire, find the spaces between the stars and fill them with hope. you and i can plant a whole planet of flowers, lie in the light of a strange sun, everything quiet & complete.

if you say the same thing over and over again, it can sound like a prayer. like before you, someone else was holding up this planet, and after you have moved on to better planes, someone else will be repeating herself and thinking she is singing this song alone. can you hear me all the way down there? can you hear this voice in your voice? what would you like me to say?

which came first / the lover or the knife? / WHICH CAME FIRST / MY CHEST OR YOUR HANDS?

Who taught you that love is only good until it’s opened? Who told you that it spoils? Why did you take it so literally?

Me in history class: Wow, humanity has been through some fascinating times!  I wonder if I’ll ever live through major historical events!