By Carlie Blume
@carlie_blume

Did you watch my dislocation that summer? A swollen kernel
yanked by the teeth from its cob

that cracking—almost choreographed,
pedestrian in its probability, like the spine of another book
I tried to thrust upon myself.

(I always did chug back the metaphors like they were medicine.)

But enough of that—was that you? Peering out
from whatever celestial cupboard or cloud
they assigned you to,

(did you go where we agreed you’d wait for me?)

with me on those mornings I rode my bike,
wall-eyed as I shoved my nose into the sour heat of a lilac

plump with impending rot, taunting me as I ran alongside
the thin reel of warm months?

There while I turned away
from the empty pelt of that flattened rat?

(You’d think at 36 I’d finally be able to look directly at a dead animal.)

I passed that thing for a week
each day it’s form contorting, obfuscating under petrichored cement

minced down to nothing
but a thought. Hapless matter until it was

no matter.

Until one day it was just  
gone.

I wonder if grief could be like that? All this raw material to
feed through the weighted wheels of days collected—

changing color, texture, viscosity.

Until one day

I no longer search for you in the buckling wick
or the congealed breath of a year gone off key.

Carlie Blume is a writer of fiction and poetry. Her writing centres on women’s issues, motherhood, mental health and the sexual politics within relationships and marriage. She loves crisp autumn evenings, Yacht Rock and Murder She Wrote.