Which Witch I’ve Been - Stevie Edwards
Nobody knows my sorrow like the rainbow-haired
sandwich artist at the Subway on State Street—
not my latest lover whom I won’t bring home
to see the groceries I haven’t bought, three weeks
musty laundry amassed across bathroom tile,
the life I haven’t attended to since October gloomed.
The gray horizon made a witch of me. I said horrible
things to the ones I love. Now, who will unbury me?
Each cheap take-out order, a declaration of
unbearable without limit: the cracking and whisking
of eggs, taking steel wool to the frying pan,
all these banalities made Herculean by the slippage
between illness and blues. I turn off my phone
to lessen the pathos of no one calling to say
this too shall pass, like in a good chick flick
where the damsel grows into a catalogue posture.
The gray horizon made a witch of me. I said horrible
things to the ones I love. Now, who will unbury me?
Nobody knows my sorrow like my sorrow knows
the square footage of my apartment, how many steps
it takes to pace from one end to the other—the flex
of calve and creek of joints, the plodding trudge,
its austere territory. I can still circle spots on my body
that want to touch the world and be touched.
The gray horizon made a witch of me. I said horrible
things to the ones I love. Now, who will unbury me?
