Two Poems
Abigail Ray
Foolhardy and Finite
I used to live in a beautiful house
the windows faced East and sometimes West
lace curtains brass candlesticks and Simon and Garfunkel’s “the dangling conversation” playing on the turntable.
There was a room full of naked women
all the guests asked to see it,
but never actually saw it.
I used to sit at my green desk and bleed.
I used to live in a beautiful house
littered in eggshells that sound like gunshots when they crack
haunted cabinets and inhabitants who shatter
glass for fun. Tufts
of white fur covered every surface.
Like all things close to the ground,
a man without a spine carried it on his back.
I used to live in a beautiful house
but the color drained from the walls like something left in the sun for too long
bleached pastel faded and curling,
the house folding in on itself like a man peering at a bug.
You came home to a barren wasteland
and cursed me
because I took the last of the rainbows with me when I left.
Now I live in Picasso’s The Blue Room
and I wake up saying “baby” to no one in particular. Panic straining my voice
a hapless plea for a nameless face
an open casket with a familiar stranger inside,
like someone you saw in a dream once but can’t quite place.
I drink too much and talk to walls
the cost of freedom, the price of salt.
The blue room is kind to me
it’s overcrowded cold and conditional
what can I say?
I got tired of being loved only for what I could provide:
beauty in the shape of fine art vintage settees porcelain houseplants books and colors
suffocating me into submission,
your admission of guilt like a ticket out.
No one really knew me, they just liked the way I decorated.
I live in a beautiful house
like most things it belongs to someone else
my body in the attic and soul in the basement
the main floor holds only ghosts.
I fall asleep in total darkness and wake up bathed in blue
Like a fish seen through moving water,
a creature in motion
pausing to take a breath.
A Poem About Killing the Concept of Time Disguised as a Poem About Grief
Moments of clarity caught between explosions of memory
montages of us dancing under neon lights
I thought I saw your sister at Stumptown but in her fifteen-year-old skin,
not her monstrous twenty-two-year-old molt
it made me wistful for a time when I was someone else.
Fingering your necklace feeling my stomach drop when the band starts to play
losing a best friend is worse than losing a lover
and what do you do when you lose both in one person?
Watch the light move from the floor to the corner of your bedroom wall
find a place to live there, between the slats of feeling
make a new home out of temporality
stain your sheets with blood cum and tears, preferably in that order
get back into all your favorite media from middle school, but without the shame this time
(but for the love of God don’t watch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind)
tune out words from your relatives when they ask what happened
replace your smile with a snarl
then back into a smile
and then a snarl again.
Kill the concept of Time, that old bastard, take him out back and shoot him for me
He has too much power, let it dissipate like stardust,
coating us in a layer of cosmic film until we are all our own masters.
Until our collective grief starts cocooning us
and instead of learning, we just repeat the same old patterns
so Time reforms, all the stardust conjoining into a gelatinous mass and he holds my head under the water
I’m screaming for air but no one can hear me
Can you hear me?
About the Author
Abigail Ray is a writer from Portland, Oregon. She has been published in Fruitslice, Maudlin House, and Same Faces Collective, among others. She has her BS in English and Writing, and primarily writes poetry, personal essays, and fiction. Her goal is to graduate from her current job as “Mad Woman in the Attic,” to “Vaguely Off-Putting Lighthouse Keeper.” For the benefits, mostly.
