(PROSE POEM)
FOR ROSE, WHOM EVERYONE ELSE CALLS TELIA
ALLISON DARCY
FOR ROSE, WHOM EVERYONE ELSE CALLS TELIA
ALLISON DARCY
Somewhere between inside joke and biblical weight is the space I want to hold you in. Somewhere between the person I’ve been, the person you think I can be, the ways which we have wandered, we are both in bed and shaking. There is not much more to say, even if it doesn’t make sense. I imagine you in a rocking chair. I imagine you where nostalgia lives, where there are bluebells, where love is a reflective verb and where words mean what we wish. I think sometimes about my only girlfriend: how her blood tasted when it dripped off her chin, how she listed songs I didn’t know (how you would have just sang them,) the ways she used me and the ways I do the same, the monster you probably really can see that I am. I am learning, still, about kingdoms. I am learning about differences and things I thought I had, about accusations, middle names, the reasons to keep things private. I tell you I love you, and our hearts beat the same way. I tell you I love you, and you return it for store credit.
Allison Darcy is a Pushcart Prize-nominated writer and seeker currently at work on her MFA in Fiction at North Carolina State University. She is grateful to have had stories, essays, and poems in such publications as Tishman Review, Jewish Currents, Nat. Brut, and Poetica Magazine. She can be found at allisondarcywrites.com and occasionally tweets @_allisondarcy.
