I saw the inside of a heart today, sliced open like Christmas dinner. My wound in anatomy class. I lost the not-love-of-my-life to a woman from Phoenix. I knew nothing about either of them, except that his dark hair got me lost and his eyes were compasses bright like new nickels. And three years later I see a dinner, several dinners as each of those nickel eyes watch me eat. And as I pull a salad to my lips and teeth those new nickels are pockets-full, and jingle against other loose change. At once I am the watcher, my dull copper eyes remembering five-cent gazes. -- Danielle Susi is an MFA student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Pink Pangea, Airplane Reading, Vagabond City, Squawk Back, Decades Review, The Milo Review, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a writer’s grant and residency from the Vermont Studio Center. |