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 Sep 2024 Evan Stephens
blank
we meet at midnight (or maybe one) and you’re wearing the same
hoodie you’ve been wearing for three years. the wind nudges us
apart but somehow still you’re soft and smiling. i don’t have a
scarf. there’s a snowball down my shirt and then there’s
this noise ripped from me like i’m gasping and
laughing at the same time and it’s the
ugliest noise i’ve ever heard. i try
to chase you but you’re faster
and it’s okay because
you and i both
have such
terrible
aim.

we’re both just glad to be alone.

there
are beds
i’ll never lie in
ever again and that
is for the best. i remember
there was a time i’d wait for you
i’d sit and literally gaze out my window,
see kids on bikes and the sun passing by
but never you till i conned the moon into friendship
and she introduced us. i’d start arguments to hear you talk
but sometimes (and only sometimes) i would breathe and think,
i wanna fall asleep standing on this salted sidewalk and never wanna
wake up. sometimes you look away when my lips move like you can’t
hear. but i follow you. i teach you to paint and you teach me to dance.

it’s always the same. we get inside. you
hand me bread. we sit on the couch.
i skin my knees falling to the ground
just to hear you laugh. you shift and a
part of me wants to know the rhyme or
reason why but you roll your eyes when
i tell you poetry doesn’t need to rhyme
and i am a happy hypocrite. the bottle
is warm where your hand's been killing
it. it’s dead when i hand it back.

when i fall asleep your eyes are with me
and when i wake up you’re holding my
wrists. my skin is petrichor and yours is
smoke. suddenly there’s thunder bridging
the distance between the moon and sun,
matchflame and cumulonimbus clouds
and the carpet flips over as i pitch toward
the kitchen table. you’re photokeratitis
and i go blind. i make snow angels.
i need. i need to close my eyes.

you make me tea. i put my head in my hands.
my hair frizzes under lightning. there are no
blankets and no conversation. i pretend
to sleep on the floor and in two long hours
i’ve made friends with the spiders under
your bed. you haven’t met.

--

the alarm whispers. i pick myself off his floor. i steady myself.
i can’t look at him for too long, can't say goodbye. i glance.
his eyes are closed. there’s no way to wake him without
feeling like a wolf, or maybe a sheep. my wrinkled coat
is tangled in the rug. it's dawn. red eyes. if he was up
he would call me a mess. he's not. the sun drapes
over his sheets. i am freezing. my hand shakes
at the doorknob and i think, wrong, this
is the ugliest noise i have ever heard.
the bottle is on its side next to him.
it says nothing. i never opened
a door more slowly. i run
like there’s something
behind me. i lose a
minute when i sit
on the stairs. my
my eyes bleed. i
laugh. i told him
i hate love songs.
it's not like he
follows my
*******
spotify.

it’s always morning here
and always so quiet;
it doesn't let me say goodbye.
he's asleep but i’m alone and the air
is still. there are no stormclouds,
no suns
or snow or crescent moons.

the sky is
blue
--written 5/13/2020, edited for formatting--

grieving a loss that wasn't mine to begin with, a loss i don't even miss

title from "wish" by cymbals eat guitars
 Sep 2024 Evan Stephens
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i.

must be nice being a live-in crypt-keeper

lounging on stones till they fall over
keeping the grass warm for ‘em


ii.

i sip my juice glass of box wine

i make eye contact with the deer, freezing

a woman feeds them breadcrumbs from her car around noon
and they all saunter over

gods examining their offerings
on an altar in the mausoleum parking lot

when the sun sets, they approach loose dirt and chew
on the marigolds some suckers planted
in fits of poetic reverent irony
and i watch them(and i know they hate the taste
or i bite my cheek and know they’re supposed to)


iii.

i always wanted to live in a crypt

stained glass concrete windows
and little kids wondering what might be inside
like the doors to dracula’s castle
too distant for curious fists to reach

no wi-fi no hi-byes
no glowing screens
or angry yellow eyes through dusty curtains
and no need to save my neighbors’ numbers

or pretend the empty apple tree don’t bother me


iv.

after a while
meeting people who think they’re immortal stops being funny

like a joke you tell a thousand times
till you realize no one’s laughing
or the birthday card in the dust below your bed
that you now force to live on your wall

maybe i’ve lived here too long

because i used to climb that apple tree
just like she climbed a cherry tree in italy
just like the poor talented ghost who one day became it

but one by one we all swung down
and now none of us know what season it is,
just that it’s colder than it was when we first stepped off the grass
on a rainy day in april

because the deer don’t come near me anymore

they know i’m always empty-handed,
always hear my shivering bones approaching
when they fall asleep laying on her chest


v.

i stay awake, surrounded
at the kitchen table,
heating up the meatballs we found in her freezer
and sipping box wine with one ice cube ringing against the glass
a couple blocks away
--written 10/18/2020--
 Sep 2024 Evan Stephens
blank
up until you are four feet tall
you think you're gonna be the next ****** mary;

every day you comb your hair with soap-dry fingers
and dress up like the sky.
you practice raising your hand and using it
to press the cumulonimbus waiting between your lips
gently down your throat;
you practice being clear;
you practice cursive till it's circuitry

at lunch, you fold airplanes with precision,
cover them in crayon script and
throw them toward the floaters
in your vision, past birches
and the pale afternoon moon.
your worst will dive to a floor stained with pizza grease;
your best will only sit indefinitely
on the reachless windowsill
of the school cafeteria

you and your best friend
practice getting married at recess,
gathering dandelions and buttercups into sloppy bouquets
till she gets stung by a bee
and is led inside through gray hallways.
you play statue on the grass in a dark green jumper
and look for white clovers while you wait for the bell

your third grade teacher has you
dressing 'venial sin' and 'mortal sin'
in lemon-scented ink that burns your lips
but not the page;
it makes you taste petrichor
writhing in your teeth, hear downpours
against the wild soil of your esophagus and cheeks,
and in a few years you'll try to bury your guilt
with acorns deep in that sandy ground

you're used to laying upside-down on your bed
wondering if jesus ever lied to mary and joseph
about climbing trees under bethlehem's star,
if he let their branches color
his books green, his hands purple.
you wonder if it's sinful
to scar notebooks how you do, how he did:
quiet, inhaling--

--

at five and a half feet tall, you still feel
like how jesus' notebooks probably weren't:

you allow the dots on your i's to dangle too far to the left,
your clothes and hair and sky to be scorched
by prism fragments and setting suns

and, sometimes, you let the clouds between your lips talk for you,
and, sometimes, every syllable is a promise from god after the flood

but sometimes you kneel in back pews
and recite a tenth hail mary
and think about whether she ever held a hand
that was stained yellow from the petals of palm-warmed flowers:

and sometimes you're blank again
--written 6/25/18--

aka "catholic guilt: the poem"
 Sep 2024 Evan Stephens
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--iii of cups, reversed--


before i fall asleep
i watch you dance on the ceiling

neon blue and purple skies
silhouetting bodies
growing blurry and distorted by bass and
***** waters flowing out
waterfalls through straws flowing out
through me

crashing into the mattress uneven and seeping
a beat i reluctantly match

raising toasts to nothing
to last nights
and all the nights you’ll spend on airplanes and car rides
to states i’ll never travel

i go to sleep
and i watch you dance on the ceiling

***** waterfalls spilling endlessly from upturned glasses
seeping through my blanket


--the tower--


it’s a sigh when lightning strikes
and neon lights go out

it's easy
to light all my candles
and flicker east toward the window
curled and waved and cresting and silent
a thousand miles away from you
--written 6/19/24--

i asked my tarot cards for inspiration and they didn't disappoint me

reminiscing on the dismal days i'm supposed to be nostalgic for

title from "by the river" by aesop rock
and then
when the dust settled.

oh
clarity
what did you do for me?

ignorance is preferable
when
you don't need to know.
I had a dream that I found you on the Subway, leaning on a rail guard by the door slouched you said our loved had ended with such sweetness in your eyes that I cupped your left cheek with my hands and smiled

When the doors slide open, I proceeded to put my arm around you and guide you off as you drunkenly made your way out. I knew I would still love you
just not in the same way. If before you had pierced me like a needle, now you were one of the threads that had stitched me. And so I kept smiling
it feels like,
life
is of 3 three things.
You get hurt,
and they walk away fine.
they get hurt,
and you walk away guilty.
or occasionally,
not common.
and rarely to ever happen,
you both,
walk away forcefully
knowing that you both have torn each other's heart
apart.
knowing that you truly want to be together,
but it's not worth It.
and now you both, are hurting.
acheching.
My mother told me she spent all of her life with the wrong person, He said to her casually.

Your father, She replied with her eyebrows raised.

No, herself, He responded and finished putting the groceries away.
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