Still There By Ellyssa Pearce

You float between my feet and stick to my soles.

You’re always there and never leaving like

A bird awake at dawn outside the open

Window trying to awake you and not

Let sleep take you back and be alone with

The person that was missed so much and will

Never be let go. Will I drown in you,

Will I fall into your pit, Will you end the questions.

You hold me in a bubble like a cloud of

Mist that surrounds your daily walk in the

 Morning cold and wet with which seems like no air.

 I’m suffocating with the lack of breath

And space you do not allow. Am I stuck in this pool,

Am I damaged in this pit, Am I answering your questions.

You suspend me like a chrysalis that

Doesn’t hold a butterfly but something

Not right, something that’s full of doubt and wrong.

I’m lying on a bed of red that burns

And sighs when a cold body and shadow

Lie together. The drowning has slowed down,

The pit has tightened, The questions are lost.

You block my focus like a wall of gas

Black and thick rippling sharp and fast trying

To soak in all it can and not disappear.

I’m here and trying to understand the

Pain you want me to feel, the hurt you want

Me to forget with you, you want me in

The same place, but I refuse. The water is gone.

The pit has pushed me out. The questions are still questions.

We have evened out but the questions stay questions

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Echo by Pura Lopez-Colome  

                         In memoriam Emily Dickinson

It would not sound so deep
Were it a Firmamental Product—
Airs no Oceans keep—

Afloat between your lens
and your gaze,
the last consideration to go
across my gray matter
and its salubrious
deliquescence
is
whether or not I'll swim,
whether I'll be able to breathe,
whether I'll live as before.
I'm caught in the bubble
of your breath.
It locks me in.
Drives me mad.
Confined to speak alone,
I talk and listen,
question and answer myself.
I hum, I think I sing,
I breathe in, breathe in and don't explode.
I'm no one.
Behind the wall
of hydrogen and oxygen,
very clear, almost illuminated,
you allow me to think
that the Root of the Wind is Water
and the atmosphere
smells of salt and microbes and intimacy.
And in that instant comes
the low echo
of a beyond beyond,
a language archaic and soaked
in syllables and accents suited
for re-de-trans-forming,
bringing light
which brings out
melanin
from beneath another skin:
the hollow of a voice
which speaks alone.