Jennifer Flescher

STRUCK

 

Bodies mangled touch themselves –

palm to uterus or spine to shank...

I want to forget. Or, at least,

to stop remembering.

 

We see again what hit us.

Somewhere an alarm –

someone will not wake up, or

someone has left for pollution

 

what they did not need.

Bodies mangled still desire hold.

But can’t. We see again what hit us.

Somewhere, an alarm.

 

It was the clock by your window.

It was your phone turned loud

for the call you meant to come

but then ignored.

 

[....]

Jennifer Flescher

Hope, then threat, passed

thrice. I lied. So often

and not knowing how.

I understood

 

far more than I let on. But never how

little you thought of me.

The car was going slow. But still the bird...

I tried to stop! We looked inside –

 

I thought it would be beating...

I looked and looked

for where we’d come from

or what we’d look like whole.