The Everything
Brandie Trent
We knew in the hot July of Adirondack summer camps
but we built this fragile toy airplane and took flight.
The takeoff was always gorgeous, easy, flawless
(we made other lovers want to construct wings and try),
but our Styrofoam wings were temporary,
too hollow to handle the heat that we would become
and we couldn’t …
Now your voice comes in the dark before sunrise
when the house is asleep.
Your voice is an old crow’s feather.
Your voice is a blinking cursor
and I wait breathlessly upon every keystroke.
Where are you in the night?
Where are you in the night?
Your voice is a pill
and I am made large with each dosage,
stronger and braver
Bold
Your voice is a pill
and I am choked with anxiety,
can’t breathe in the dark,
in the rocking chair where
I keep the same rhythm I kept
rocking babies
into nighttime
I want to pull your voice like truth
from a fortune cookie
I search for you in the everything:
in the spinning dial of rotary phones
(I am calloused by trying),
in the static of AM radio shows
(you are there always and indistinct),
in the buzz of the mosquito
(you light on me
and with a straw you suck up my life
and infect my blood.
I let you leave me
penetrated and swollen.
I crave the relief of the scratch,
Tear back the scab and bleed more.
Scarred,
The thing is still there
Spiraling though my veins,
Reaching inward
And now with tentacles
Is a hunger that chokes.)
I want to take you up,
warm and solid,
and drink for the earth of this thing we’ve sculpted.
I want to smear you hot like a salve across me
to break up this concrete
ache in my chest
and cough you up
like wasted sin.
but we built this fragile toy airplane and took flight.
The takeoff was always gorgeous, easy, flawless
(we made other lovers want to construct wings and try),
but our Styrofoam wings were temporary,
too hollow to handle the heat that we would become
and we couldn’t …
Now your voice comes in the dark before sunrise
when the house is asleep.
Your voice is an old crow’s feather.
Your voice is a blinking cursor
and I wait breathlessly upon every keystroke.
Where are you in the night?
Where are you in the night?
Your voice is a pill
and I am made large with each dosage,
stronger and braver
Bold
Your voice is a pill
and I am choked with anxiety,
can’t breathe in the dark,
in the rocking chair where
I keep the same rhythm I kept
rocking babies
into nighttime
I want to pull your voice like truth
from a fortune cookie
I search for you in the everything:
in the spinning dial of rotary phones
(I am calloused by trying),
in the static of AM radio shows
(you are there always and indistinct),
in the buzz of the mosquito
(you light on me
and with a straw you suck up my life
and infect my blood.
I let you leave me
penetrated and swollen.
I crave the relief of the scratch,
Tear back the scab and bleed more.
Scarred,
The thing is still there
Spiraling though my veins,
Reaching inward
And now with tentacles
Is a hunger that chokes.)
I want to take you up,
warm and solid,
and drink for the earth of this thing we’ve sculpted.
I want to smear you hot like a salve across me
to break up this concrete
ache in my chest
and cough you up
like wasted sin.