Bodega | Eighteen

After Elizabeth Alexander

That Summer in Colorado, everything was stained orange:
the peeling, dead-skin floorboards of the motel’s porch,
the sunsets that spilled like yolk over the ridges and peaks,
the illuminated crack beneath the door when she was showering;
we slept in the same bed, backs bent apart: our own separate room,
just as we had planned before the breaking and kissing
and breaking again. I tried not to think about it.
I sweat through my clothes, cracked jokes to help
her forget about the medication-shaped absence in her bag,
about the high crags, falls and divides, that so cruelly mirrored us:
earth wasn’t the only thing sundered.

Her skin was made of sunlight, glowing when she spoke;
the cliffs behind her; She wore flare pants, dismantled citrus with her hands,
ate raspberries, pizza, talked about college, sweating
down her forehead and back. She only wanted to walk in front,
so I let her. The slopes were hot, but my cheeks were hotter whenever
she looked at me, whenever she looked away again. Each time, she embraced me
close enough to feel my heartbeat—I don’t know if she did. She always pulled away.
I’m sorry, she said, dark hemispheres glinting saffron in the bedside lamp,
I feel differently than I thought I would.
Her eyes were always golden when the light hit them.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a man jump from a building
off the Denver-bound highway and didn’t say anything.
The city was dark and huge, and I walked
alone beneath the moon: I saw fountains, smelled burning weed,
heard a busker, and the moon and I made a promise;
my phone died, and the train left at midnight.
We passed by towns covered in vermillion
smog, which thickened as the air quality sank.
The train cars rattled like Hell. I could see
only her shoulder shaking and falling as she spoke,
Why didn’t you tell me?
Because I don’t owe you anymore,
I wanted to say,
I don’t owe you anything.

140 – September 2024

By Willow Rueckert-Gardner

Eighteen