STATE OF THINGS

Let’s hear it for the electric moments before the last apartment, winding all the way back past summers stacked on top of each other like lemons in a bowl, to eating crackers under the willow tree, showing you that I could still cartwheel. Three cheers for the Technicolor beginnings of things, curling my hair with you on speakerphone, sending pictures of my breasts and stomach, the weight of you, reading People magazine out loud, stoned and sweating at the laundromat. To piles of sweatshirts, boxers, thongs, rum in coffee mugs, bourbon in a blizzard. Here, here, for The Turtles on the radio after your mother’s funeral, to the anniversary, and then the second, third, fourth, to the graffiti by the wastewater treatment plant. Let’s even toast the strip club, which you thought might improve the state of things, the shredded carpet, pregnancy scare, hangovers, unemployment. Let’s hear it for the laced grass, your lips in a thin line, the maintenance fuck, the narrow whistle of a train barreling nowhere in a hurry.

Emma Wilson is a writer and editor living in Illinois. Her poetry has appeared in CHEAP POP, Magma Poetry, and she blogs about creative recovery at mentalthrillness.com.