ROOM WELTS

I feel the trees bowing around my grief
sick in motion, silk flags hang like clothes
to dry. pens with blue ink in them peek out
of the round rug. I make myself a piece of
sourdough toast with butter and wind pushes
the leaves around. I want to feel that out
of control. each couch is draped with crocheted
blankets, my throat coated with thick snot
sitting on a bench and watching the green
spurts lift towards brick from menard’s buckets.
all these little vines have appeared, and lavender
fuzzy heads next to doggie bags tied up
I hold you up to the light, an insect lands
on my shoulder, the butterfly I stamped into
my notebook all those months ago after
the hospital. and I’d finger its dust whenever
I opened up the pages to take notes in the
buildings. I will be very old someday, and there
will be a memory of you with me sitting
on blue plastic squares in a tunnel, and I’m
questioning the end of bodies.
here the foolishness of smearing my face
with the absence. I punish myself in the
apartment. each windowsill is just a pair of
sunlight, wood that dips in like a mattress where
we sunk, made an indent with our lives
looking out at a street, a chihuahua in a sweater
a gang sign on henry’s car, a strip of ice that
I swirl around my pink mouth, lozenge
or a small toothpick, study the contents.

Delia Rainey is a writer and musician from St. Louis, Missouri. She is currently a nonfiction MFA candidate at Columbia College Chicago. She is the author of a mini chapbook Private Again (Ghost City Press, 2018) and an audio chapbook The Blue and Red Gummy Worm (Grown Up Music, 2018.) She tweets often: @hellodeliaaaaa.