By Emily Dexter
Featured in Caesura 2020: Imago
Field; Forest
We melt, together: The song into silence, And I into the balcony Seat. The chapel below Is a collage of color: Stained glass, lavender Light thrown on stage like Premature roses, a thousand Dots of yellow, red, every hue Of sweatshirt and dress. Everything settles, restores To solid state, except for Me and my thoughts flowing Liquid, a stream that floats me Flat on my back to a field Barren and endless, Where I lie beneath A grave-gray sky. Cold Laps at my socked soles, Curls around bare wrists. Am I still melting, or now Evaporating? The scene shifts; I am lost among aspens. Two roads diverge through The wood before me. Then Green leaves bleach white, Still trembling. The roads Become three, become four, Become six, so each path Is the arm of a snowflake, and I stand at its center, and turn Circles until forest turns Kaleidoscope: roads diverging— Eight, ten paths, thirteen, I Can’t count them as My vision tunnels—tunnels Branching off of tunnels. I slide, see my younger self
Frozen in a full room, or Fighting to keep head above Water, or glaring out the window At Robert Frost School. Where am I? I am Lost among aspens, whose White leaves cover up Every path. I am walking Alone across the barren Field, though the uneven earth Might as well be a treadmill; Nothing appears on the horizon, Nothing breathes. What am I To do here? How long Do I walk here? How long Before my limbs go numb? Then, from far off: The first chords of a song Familiar as from another life, A gust, and a word—stay. Teeth chatter. Pulse picks up. So small beneath this gray; So small beneath the chapel’s High ceiling. I stand, but I’m Too close to the edge, to Where balcony becomes air. Below, hands raise in worship, Almost as if to catch, but they’re So far away. Stay. Outside me: a Pointillist dream, A thousand dots of color. Inside: Grayscale and earth, the field Flowing on into flat forever. The song fades, and coats Lift from backs of chairs; Backpacks on; voices fly, But not every one, I know. Not everyone has re-frozen To solid. I join the tide Toward the door and stairs. Outside me: echo Of footsteps, ring of Laughter. Inside: quiet, A wind blowing, steady as The single syllable, stay.
Green
There was a sensitive plant on the green patio
Table; we’d run pointer fingers down the stems’ spines,
Watch the leaves faint inward, fleeing from our touch.
There was a pine tree at the point where my yard
Became yours; I’d climb the trunk, my sneakers on the chopped
Stubs of limbs, sap sticking to my palms. How the thud
Shook our houses, our swingsets, when the men brought it down.
There was a loveseat in the living room, its green Cushions falling flat over time, like the Sierra Mist My mom used to leave on the bedside table, waiting while I slept Through another season’s flu. Now the loveseat lives underground, On the green-and-red carpet, in the basement where we would turn Circles, playing, arranging plastic bell peppers and a singular glob Of peas on small plastic plates. Now I sit on the same loveseat Without you, a textbook open in my lap, a cat pawing at its pages, As the tornado sirens outside collapse into silence.
Emily Dexter is a freshman Writing and Honors Humanities major with a minor in Spanish. She enjoys reading, knitting, and saying hello to all of the cats.