Josephine Blair: After We Lose the House
Photo: Joanna C. Valente
after we lose the house, i think about the trees
our plum trees / never bore fruit / instead they gushed
orange dust / from the open / scars on their stomachs
we scraped / against them / & they blessed
our blood, sweet / hours at a time / we bathed
in each other’s / soft breathing
in college / i hung / my body
from a plum tree / a crown / of bruised fruit
in the grass / above / below me
everything flying / into some puddle / of sky
when he broke / my ribs / the next day
i stopped trying / to feel them / tender
thin peels / of my skin / stacking onto
themselves // the dust / on my thighs
lifting me / on a bough / to the night
white flag
on the warm side of my eyes, i am
still. i am god
watching a trainwreck. full
length of a city, full
spin of your tongue and no one survives.
peel me back. feed me someone
else’s life (forgive me) taste me
on every park bench forever, one scar-
let leaf at a time. unfold
futures in the dirt beneath us.
remember we’re just like them
but older. show me where to press
my lips when i unstrap
myself from dreams like these, dreams that answer
more than they promise, that remind
death dances across us with tiny legs,
that we spend all night decaying
and our bodies hardly notice.
& it’s weird that i care when we’re not anything”
but even the sun waited for us
to leave before it rose. thirty blocks
away, the live cam at Times Square
showed space between the people walking
on the screen. a city stripped naked
between us. three stories
above, a shower hissed alive. we leaned
against a fence, & the live cam at Times Square
showed streets. when it’s over, they’ll need
to be burned.
“and it’s weird that i care
when we’re not anything.”
a man drenched
in light from the sex shop next door
lit a cigarette and in a breeze, i tasted
a different life.
“weird [ ]”
is walking away from a man who kissed
himself goodbye at each traffic light
across your stomach
“[ ] anything”
is saying goodnight, but looking
at the sidewalk, it’s ashes
moving ashes marking
everything left: the memory of a fence, a puff
of metal in the rain, taste of hot
traffic on your shoulder. a whole city
sliced open waiting for the sun, & it’s weird
that i care, but when it’s over,
i’ll need to be burned.
Josephine Blair is a 28-year-old writer who recently relocated from Miami to Brooklyn. Her poetry has been featured in Epiphany Magazine, Soliloquies Anthology, Meniscus, Allegory Ridge and elsewhere. She was awarded a Brooklyn Poets Fellowship in February 2019, and her poem “Jalex” was a finalist in the 2019 Brooklyn Poets Poem of the Year Smackdown. You can follow her at instagram.com/josephine_blair.
