Elizabeth O'Connell- Thompson​
​

Changeling

There is a universe where all my devices are charged.
In this one, I burn three eggs spitting in the pan a few feet 
from me, distracted by the film buffering on my laptop
 
in which the lead, meant to be a scholar of story, readily gives 
the comely magic man her name. I boil the kettle for rosehip, 
brew it to bitterness, open the windows to let the fever out. 
 
When my lover returns, he removes from my bedside the clawhammer,
the box cutter under my pillow. He takes his place beside me 
in our bed. This house is like the one I know best, none
 
of the inner doors lock; you have to place the hamper just so 
to bar the bathroom door, leave glass bottles in the darkened
hallway to sound the alarm when knocked over. In the morning,
 
a coworker microwaves their coffee, says I haven’t been sleeping.
Must be going around. I sneeze and the world smells of honeysweet
amber to match the turning leaves. There was a while there when
 
I was bad at almost everything the people around me thought mattered.
With a few interruptions, I had a solid stretch of rightness. Good hair,
smiling ways. But the wheel can do nothing but turn.

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Elizabeth O’Connell-Thompson is a poet living in Chicago. The author of the chapbook Honorable Mention (dancing girl press), her work has been published in Howl: New Irish Writing, Iron Horse Literary Review, Poetry Ireland Review, and Room, among others. She is an associate editor for RHINO Poetry, where she cohosts the Rhino Reads series with Naoko Fujimoto.