Atlas and Alice, Issue 19
Amanda Dettmann
Self-Love in the Afterlife “Hour of the rooster, what belongs there. Hour of the rooster, what belongs there” ~JinJin Xu If your face is my face, press your forehead to my forehead. You are the baptism to my gasping bathtub. Shower me like a sunburned synecdoche. If in the afterlife I don’t recognize you, remind me how my orchid teacup split your lips blue. Sister me like a foreign language slipping between us, akin when there’s wind. There’s always wind. With and without our separateness: my pear plucked chair rocks your shadow into ricochet your rosewater coats my floating throat to high tide our blood orange peels back its own grave just in time When the world begins with breakage: December will curl its midnight toes pink. There will be no difference between grasp and gasp. That moment right before we fall asleep. A fire no one knows.
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