Blood Orange Review – Page 12 – an online journal of literature and art

The Nightswimmers

I don’t want a husband, / I’d like a zookeeper.

how far is the line / between / instinct and routine?

I start with my father’s feet.

It’s summer & all day we did what girls do . . .

my father only called me during his lunch breaks or on his way home. he never saved my number in his motorola flip phone.

This // is how the new grief travels, blackboys / digitized and hanging—light years away.

Mom used a thin black comb to roam / my skull & pulled from it tiny-legged creatures / eager to escape the bars they nestled in.

If you can bloom anywhere, honey, do it in a loom, / let joy be stitched in the space between god and your eyes.

Today i am thankful for morning frost / touched by sunlight and sparkling / on lawns and fields

Four months with my mother, and my house plants remembered what it meant to live.

The bay in my backyard always looked its most vulnerable at low tide.

As a kid, I noticed how my neighborhood unfurled in patches of uneven sidewalk, tufts of grass decorated with empty chip bags and broken bottles.

Imagine my bed queen sized and still too small, old and imperfect like my country.

Willie heard the hollow footsteps of his father’s worn black work boots coming up the cracked walkway and prayed for him to be sober.

I met Agnes at a party and she took me home.