The Shape of Another Life

by | Feb 9, 2018 | Issue One, Poetry

We tell the children not to look up, expecting a miracle. During dismissal,

a coworker asks if the moon is supposed to affect her like this—

to change the way she sleeps with her husband and she expects me

to have the answers, like I keep them in my palms. The moon moves

and turns the sun into the shape of a fetus. In another life, we walked

in rooms without statues, and the world was filled with mothers

pouring themselves into the streets—the only way pavement, cracked

with stretching green, can comfort a woman. And in that life, we needed

cigarettes and questions about war and jazz and maybe even the boys

from our long-lost hometowns. Because maybe answers aren’t needed.

Because nothing is different, and we never look at the sky anyway.

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