Natalie Easton
Laws of Motion
Hunting season you’d slow down & honk
to a bevy of flipped white tails, angry
flashes of orange. That’s how the memory
begins, as if it started there; a small town
cliché. Your boyfriend went crazy, pulled
a gun on us one night—I remember
the bullets on top of the fridge, how your cat
went missing. Other than that it’s broken,
like our police reports. My wet nose &
oil-gloss eyes in the neighbor’s kitchen;
I was a doe, all limbs & prickly hair.
At the head of the drive, in the flashing lights,
I moved in; you pushed me back. For every
action, an equal & opposite—that much
still makes sense. There are those who
let things go: kids with balloons, to see how far
they’ll fly; buddhas & saints; the dying before
they leave. I am not these—I remember:
his gun, the beam of his flashlight, the sound
of the door you slammed to save me. & then
the recurring dreams: I could not find my class.
I woke to become the homeless girl thumbing
ten dollars, white in the cracker aisle,
going to school to drop Spanish III.
to a bevy of flipped white tails, angry
flashes of orange. That’s how the memory
begins, as if it started there; a small town
cliché. Your boyfriend went crazy, pulled
a gun on us one night—I remember
the bullets on top of the fridge, how your cat
went missing. Other than that it’s broken,
like our police reports. My wet nose &
oil-gloss eyes in the neighbor’s kitchen;
I was a doe, all limbs & prickly hair.
At the head of the drive, in the flashing lights,
I moved in; you pushed me back. For every
action, an equal & opposite—that much
still makes sense. There are those who
let things go: kids with balloons, to see how far
they’ll fly; buddhas & saints; the dying before
they leave. I am not these—I remember:
his gun, the beam of his flashlight, the sound
of the door you slammed to save me. & then
the recurring dreams: I could not find my class.
I woke to become the homeless girl thumbing
ten dollars, white in the cracker aisle,
going to school to drop Spanish III.
Edge
Months before your death, you began to withdraw.
Your phone was always off; you told me bill collectors
were searching for my step-brother. It hurt to put
your arms against your sides, feel yourself breathing
in the darkroom air. The family shadows heated every
occupied space, hunted your possessions; your beagle
watched you from his chair. I was proud of my desire
not to superimpose your life onto mine any longer--
to find that the lines met in a vanishing point—I rarely
called. You felt it was time to take the pictures down;
bears and wolves, you told your husband, should replace
your children’s faces on the wall. By January you’d known
so long that your words burned as they flew, like birds
in a dream: how they drop like stones into a field, black
& unwanted. I still wake at night frightened by my own
heartbeat, by the thought of the elastic red expanding
as thin & constant in my chest as the unanswered questions--
just as you did. It was not goodbye enough that you bit
your lip and showed me how to make your meatloaf.
I borrow your silence & box up the ocean—the morning
slides your letter of resignation each day beneath the door:
a flat white edge.
Your phone was always off; you told me bill collectors
were searching for my step-brother. It hurt to put
your arms against your sides, feel yourself breathing
in the darkroom air. The family shadows heated every
occupied space, hunted your possessions; your beagle
watched you from his chair. I was proud of my desire
not to superimpose your life onto mine any longer--
to find that the lines met in a vanishing point—I rarely
called. You felt it was time to take the pictures down;
bears and wolves, you told your husband, should replace
your children’s faces on the wall. By January you’d known
so long that your words burned as they flew, like birds
in a dream: how they drop like stones into a field, black
& unwanted. I still wake at night frightened by my own
heartbeat, by the thought of the elastic red expanding
as thin & constant in my chest as the unanswered questions--
just as you did. It was not goodbye enough that you bit
your lip and showed me how to make your meatloaf.
I borrow your silence & box up the ocean—the morning
slides your letter of resignation each day beneath the door:
a flat white edge.