Four Poems
Happy Birthday
When we met, you said
you wanted a woman
who could kill you.
I forgot about this,
and kept trying to keep you alive.
Last year, I bought you a winter coat
grey, with anchors on the buttons,
extra lining, the kind of thing
someone else would wear,
a person concerned
with enduring the cold.
This year, I planned to get you
the Dune board game,
and the ability to keep your blood
in your body.
I would tell you “Happy Birthday,”
but speaking to you
when we’re apart
makes me feel like my skin
is separating from my bones.
Instead, I will dance
with a stranger
eat vegetables with dinner,
attempt to give you the gift
of moving on.
Return to Oz
I called because I needed you
but also because
you’re one of the last people I love
who is still alive.
We’ve been here before.
We sat in diners
ate grilled cheese and apple pie,
stood alone
in empty rooms surrounded
by the sound of chanting monks.
This time
there are rules.
If you’re wandering
through the desert
don’t fall down,
or your body will turn into sand
then scatter
in the parched wind.
If I kiss your face,
my head will be removed
and placed in a glass cabinet
with all the other mouths
that have made the same mistake.
I cried when I realized
this was a ghost love
the spirit of our past returned
from the dead
to hold my hand,
haunt my heart.
“Think about sadder things,” you said
to comfort me.
BFF
Saying you have a best friend
feels childish until
most of your family dies
and it starts to mean
twin, soothsayer, lifeguard.
Two years ago my mother died,
then my grandmother.
This time it’s my father.
When Leigh comes over
I am sitting on the couch
burrowed in a hamster nest
of tissues and stained quilts.
My hair is in a ponytail
on top of my head and she tells me
I look like a Barbie doll.
“That’s me,” I say
“Seen Too Much Barbie!”
I am hilarious
when I’m traumatized
She brings me a stack of
Glamour magazines
and a copy of Survival at Auschwitz.
I only want to read about
beauty tips and genocide.
We drink cheap wine, make plans
for the future
that include a trip to Paris
and her parents
adopting me.
Occasionally I stop our conversation,
say I have to cry.
It’s like throwing up,
violent and emptying.
“I don’t understand
how this happened.” I say
over and over again
until it no longer makes sense.
None of this makes sense.
The people who brought me
into the world are gone
and if I am them and they
no longer exist,
what does that make me?
Eventually she has to leave.
It’s late, the bottle’s empty.
We hug and say goodbye,
both of us buzzing, red-cheeked,
so alive.
Red Shift
The promise of any new relationship
is followed by my assurance
that I am simply collecting
more people to miss.
Everyone knows
the best way to draw someone
close, is to stop loving them.
“I feel like I’m making you sad
just by existing,” said every man
I’ve ever met.
How do I tell them
I am filled with the dead?
That my heart is a bellows
puffing out air?
That true bonds are built
on how much of your blood
I have seen, how many bodies
you have helped me bury?
I only know one way
to tolerate the end of things:
None of this ever happened.
You don’t even exist.
Sarah Bridgins is a writer and performer living in Brooklyn. Her poems have appeared in NAP, Ampersand Review, Sink Review, Luna Luna, Two Serious Ladies, Monkeybicycle, and Big Lucks, among other journals. You can read more of her work at sarahbridgins.com.