Morgan Liphart, "In your brownstone on Mill Street" (poem)

MORGAN LIPHART | IN YOUR BROWNSTONE ON MILL STREET

You roll in bed both directions while dreaming of a bird in a nest flimsy, little bones soft, sticky feathers nosing his way out of the leaves and sticks to find air, to fall and fall. When you wake you wonder why you’re so obsessed with breaking.

In the shower, you remember today is the day—April 5th— the Vedic reader told you you’d meet the love of your life. So you use the honey shampoo, extra sweet and extra soft, as if the waiting hadn’t hardened you in some unknowable way already.

By noon, you’re stirring your microwave tikka masala with a plastic fork instead of your silverware so this feels less like home, so this feels less like how it’s always going to be.

Outside smells like damp spring. Tiny miracles fight through thawing earth with a reckless belief that if they reach hard enough they will be able to touch the sun. But when the crickets start to chirp at the doused daylight, you sit on the edge of your bed, toes kissing the hardwood and know this day, too, was not for you.

Santa Fe Literary Review 91