A Pollened Haze of Light
by Tamara Panici
-for B
In the beginning, there was no darkness at all.
Sister and I lived on a damp mattress and made stories
with humanlike shadows. Night crept up like mushrooms do.
Hunger glistened like a sweating hog.
I counted my fingers and crawled
into the hidden pocket of my saliva stained pillow--
emptiness. Not even a crumb left of stolen goods,
not a smell of crust up my sleeve. I prayed to a frog
and felt incredibly guilty; I had no idea what to say
to the smallest, pearliest amphibian who fell from the sky’s open maw
on a day it rained everything but loaves of bread.
Sister, we are out of it now.
You more than I. No hunger has touched your body
for months, and I no longer know which god left us behind.
Yellowing and yellowing, I sicken at the edges
of my ghost. My memories bruise like fallen magnolia blossoms
between pulse, stillness, pulse. I want to believe, Sister, that
in the end, there is only another beginning. However slanted
or distant the end-genesis may be, I want to feel only one thing,
that there leaks in it at least a pollened hazed of light;
that in it, there is not enough darkness
to clothe your traveling memories.
In the beginning, there was no darkness at all.
Sister and I lived on a damp mattress and made stories
with humanlike shadows. Night crept up like mushrooms do.
Hunger glistened like a sweating hog.
I counted my fingers and crawled
into the hidden pocket of my saliva stained pillow--
emptiness. Not even a crumb left of stolen goods,
not a smell of crust up my sleeve. I prayed to a frog
and felt incredibly guilty; I had no idea what to say
to the smallest, pearliest amphibian who fell from the sky’s open maw
on a day it rained everything but loaves of bread.
Sister, we are out of it now.
You more than I. No hunger has touched your body
for months, and I no longer know which god left us behind.
Yellowing and yellowing, I sicken at the edges
of my ghost. My memories bruise like fallen magnolia blossoms
between pulse, stillness, pulse. I want to believe, Sister, that
in the end, there is only another beginning. However slanted
or distant the end-genesis may be, I want to feel only one thing,
that there leaks in it at least a pollened hazed of light;
that in it, there is not enough darkness
to clothe your traveling memories.
Tamara Panici's works have appeared or are forthcoming in places like POETRY, Waxwing, Poetry Online, Denver Quarterly, Northwest Review, and elsewhere. She has been a finalist for the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, and has won the Black Warrior Review Poetry Contest and the River Styx Microfiction Contest, among others. She lives in Washington. D.C. with her partner and their child, and their child-to-be.