#npwm17

Months ago as a parking lot flooded around us, I felt us go from walk to run, the world swelling from all the rain, and us becoming somehow bigger too. And just now, sitting beside you reading poems about triumph I have felt us go from run to jump. “At Last” wafts in your window from somewhere unknown and life is so much like a song.

Like a vase tipped off the table, or a bungee jumper leaving bridge behind, I have just felt myself go into free fall. Gravity has taken over, solid ground no longer something to curl my toes around and there you are. Captain of the whole way down. You are open air and safety net, you are acceleration and parachute, you are that stomach-in-your-throat thrill that’s a little bit scary and a lot a bit alive

I. DENIAL i was at work when i got the text saying that you had died. i had been steeling myself for the news all week, but once it came all i could do was blink. so i sent back a heart emoji, put my phone down, and didn’t pick it up again for three days.

II. ANGER i was taught that our bodies were made to keep us safe. stiff ribs shelter soft organs, hard skull shields brain. we are all told to trust these homes, to honor these walls, but we too soon learn that they are faulty and can fall to rubble with the slightest quake. the unfairness of it all makes my vision blur.

III. BARGAINING it’s not so much that i would give something up so you could’ve stayed. i just wonder who needed you so badly, and what still here (if anything) could possibly be of equal value?

IV. DEPRESSION i think about your cats fruitlessly searching the house for your lap. i think about your husband sleeping alone for the first time in thirty eight years. does he still save a space for you? did the world really not have space for you? talking about you in past tense seems ill fitting in my mouth, like not even my grammar can fathom your absence.

I see a black cat scurry across a warehouse and insist it must be a sign.

We sit under rustling trees with nothing but moonlight between us. This ruby colored quarantine holds secrets and second glances, this honeyed winter sky hangs thick with the things we haven’t hesitated to say out loud.

We don’t claim to know the future, but we kiss as if we are pushing crystal balls and tarot cards between our tongues. The days yet to come all taste as close as tomorrow.

This late night quiet feels like a faith-fueled leap off the bluffs, down to the inky oceans that billow and wait below. I am hoping we will learn to swim the same the way a baby would learn to dance—

The underworld unfurls before me, curling its fingers around my throat. Go, it says in a voice-like fire. The heat rises out from spots where our skins touch and it aches to burn anything tender and green.

For a minute it seems like this home could never be home again. Like my eyes might never see the blue of the sky the same way, my ears never hear the fountains pour themselves into themselves night after night.

“I mean really, if either of us are robots, it’s probably me—the one who doesn’t get lost but drives until the gas runs out.” -Sierra DeMulder (@sierrademulder)

I am always turning over stones. I turn them in my palm until they are smoother than the skin of my palm itself

and believe me, my fingers are so tired of doing this. I turn and turn and turn and turn until there’s no more stone

but my hand still moves as if there were. I hold on to these phantom obsessions, unsure if skin has eroded more stone or

stone eroded more skin. I drive until the gas runs out, never lost or without intention but unable to switch from gas to brake,

unable to slow down until the machine exhausts itself, sputtering and choking on the side of the road,