Contemplating by Alyssa Abell

My Mother took her exes gun

          I am afraid he'll hurt himself she said.

                                                              I'm scared.

What if it goes off, explodes.

                                  The children might find it.
                              
                                                        It might find me.

I'd look at it when I felt dangerous,

                                 Curious if anyone'd miss me.

                                                                 I walk away, heavy.

I never wanted to be like uncle eddie,
                                                    
                                                      Kurt Cobain.

                                                                        I still looked.

Tomorrow still hurt, I looked.

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Poem of the Day: My Mother Contemplating Her Gun

BY NICK FLYNN

One boyfriend said to keep the bullets

locked in a different room.

                                    Another urged

            clean it

or it could explode. Larry

thought I should keep it loaded

under my bed,

                     you never know.

            I bought it

when I didn’t feel safe. The barrel

                         is oily,

             reflective, the steel

pure, pulled from a hole

                      in West Virginia. It

could have been cast into anything, nails

along the carpenter’s lip, the ladder

to balance the train. Look at this, one

                        bullet,

                        how almost nothing it is—

             saltpeter   sulphur   lead   Hell

burns sulphur, a smell like this.

                        safety & hammer, barrel & grip

             I don’t know what I believe.

I remember the woods behind my father’s house

          horses beside the quarry

stolen cars lost in the deepest wells,

the water below

            an ink waiting to fill me.

                      Outside a towel hangs from a cold line

            a sheet of iron in the sky

            roses painted on it, blue roses.

Tomorrow it will still be there.