The Widower Writes From the Shipwreck | Ellie Gold Laabs
I’ve hardly wanted after waves, but here
in this salt we were, I think, too much
each other. Every door, a mouth, every
mouth, a bed—spitting names only you
have heard. My wife, the river is drowning
all your doves and I’m so far beyond magic
I forget what it feels like to own a hat. I couldn’t
see darkness so now I go everywhere with eyes
inside my face. All these things it now seems
I’ve done, dragged by the current to bed,
to be named again—acrid.
When I was the needle, I became the blood.
When I was the blood, I became the suture.
A smile slips, skinless, from my face—
some hardness that was never spring.
My wife, I am the fault line in a city that
couldn’t settle earth, where the sea is wide
and indifferent. And the truth is I’ve grown
mauve while the others all are happy. I am
no longer habitable. Where have you gone.
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about the author:
Ellie Gold Laabs was born in Boston at the turn of the century with an east coast sensibility and a penchant for big and difficult questions. She is now a poet, living in New York, with a harmonica and an obscenely full bookshelf.