2017 / poetry / author
MALLORY PEARSON
HOW TO TIME TRAVEL
…
every road i've touched is a ley line back to my body--
traces of energy beat under my skin to the rhythm of footsteps.
i think i took to walking home last summer because i was scared
of speed and falling asleep too easily, but now i am afraid of fast cars
and the tendency of your eyes to watch me in the darkness
of the passenger seat. i walked a forked road and took a wormhole
back through the old woods where we fell into something, or
fell out of something, and felt afraid either way--
and i was touched by grief i hadn't felt yet and the tendency
to experience nostalgia after dark. it's been a while and it still rattles
in my head, how months are the same as minutes and how
i fall asleep and we belong to the same time, a year where we are in love
and not afraid of each other, or the way our knees touched
in the backseat of her car. in later decades i feel world-worn and adoring
when i think of your hands, earth-touching, skin that has felt
the split between energy and animal. on a different timeline
my body moves quickly and leaves apprehension behind. on every timeline
something happens to us and i fall asleep and you do not say goodbye.
sometimes i take myself back a few hours just to feel a little sharper
than i do when i miss the mist of your mouth, the sprigs of your hair,
the fizzling way your body moves when i shift time and try to remember.
i move through space and startle myself with it. i am still afraid
and trying desperately not to be, still too fast for my own skin. each year
feels faded beneath my eyes--now time-starched, and forlorn.
MERCIFUL LIGHT ON
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MOON
…
i wish i had seen you in your birth state
before you came to me as a girl of magic,
a mystic thing, washed clean by blinding sun
and cold winds. i find myself doubtful and afraid
when i see your silhouette, ashamed
of the way the light won’t touch you.
i took down all the paintings in my house
and cut circles in the roof for the moon to spill through,
places where you could pluck your fingers
through my bowling ball body and toss me around–
if i knock things down in my wake, it will have been
with intention and shame. everything has a shadow
and each one is darker than the last,
yours a cosmic sort of black that sucks out my breath.
if i say it again, it will catch in my throat;
i am afraid of the dark. i wish you would not go.
A WINDOW THAT SEES
THROUGH TWO HOUSES
…
there's nothing quite like the way the night
rips you into pieces. there is a ladled-out moon
above us that drips syrup onto the streets,
the dribbles of it caught in uneven pavement
and the sweet untouched bottoms of my socks.
lately i've been teaching myself a thing or two
about time traveling, how my head becomes a wormhole
for my thoughts to slip through and how
my memories of you pass through me with little more
than a shivering ripple, how houses bend
when the wind blows hard enough and how
light can pass through glass in complete darkness
to make it feel like the house isn't there at all.
i think about what it would be like to bend you back
into something unfamiliar, a body of my own shaping--
lately it hurts more to imagine you are a stranger
rather than a destroyer. i am time-cracked
occasionally, and time-shaken always,
and saying your name feels like a ritual
for a god i haven't found yet. it is important
to understand what hurt me and disregard
what left me the same. it is important to remember
that i am not the same.
THE HEAVIEST RAIN WE EVER HAD
…
it’s another evening of fading light
with another dip in the mattress, worn.
the body-shaped cavern misses your skin
in a way i can’t compete with.
another night of looking at the bookcase
and feeling the spines, the smooth ridges,
of watching sirens blink past the window
in satellite patterns, a new orbit
where no one gets hurt. in my sleep
i feel you sit on the end of the bed
and can’t bring myself to look.
i hear the tap on the glass, again,
the morning made solid by a world other than ours.
i look at the dip in the mattress for hours
and find it hard to separate it from its inherent
coffin shape, a cradle for a body now gone.
i am crowded by your absence. i feel you
back me into the corner of the room
with your swelling breath. i hear the floor
creak and the walls moan and i press my palms
to the drywall in an attempt to be read.
but it’s another night falling asleep to the rain,
the downpour of an earth shaken by you, too.
i think the window panes might shatter.
i think the house might float away.
i think i might never breathe again if i could reach for
that dip in the mattress and feel your weight.
