- Amber Shockley
- 1 min read
It happens like this:
Having children doesn’t cross your mind
for years, and then
You’re sitting across
from someone who is drinking a glass of red wine.
A longing to hike the Appalachian Trail
follows you around like a lost child in a department store:
not yours, but you want to take care of it,
help it find home, follow it home,
build a campfire for supper.
I keep loading ideas into a van
and letting someone drive off with them.
I can’t describe the kidnapper well. The policeman
yawns. The sketch artist twists my words:
He was drinking mustache. He had a wine.
I keep leaving the station with pills in my hand:
Seroquel, Diazepam, Lorazepam.
Once, I refused to come down from a zipline
platform. I was 13. My best friend ate her braces.
I didn’t trust Jesus. Not immaculately.
They sent a man to rescue me:
They sent a man to rescue me.
I’ll read you a story I wrote while I was waiting
for my order at a fancy restaurant I couldn’t afford:
Once upon a time, there was
Mistakes I’ve made march into the room.
A basic theory of interior design:
use a mirror to make a space look bigger.
Think of the universe: each star, looking glass.
...multiplicity, distance.
- Amber Shockley
- 1 min read
Forgive me, I’ve been feeling dead for a while now.
There are oranges in the bowl. They rot.
I replace them. My husband doesn’t notice.
He thinks I am the same fresh girl. Though,
he teases me my sagging backside. His fingers
at the curve. Always asking
for breakfast. Cracked eggs. Forgive me,
yolk. Life once was. I end
a phone call with my mother. I walk
into the grocery store with that fresh-hearted
pang that comes from hard words to
someone you love, someone who loves
you, loved you, over and over again,
with a washcloth when you were sour
and rotten, replacing blankets and towels,
fresh, round and warm from the dryer,
its lullaby hum. At the store, a frost
forms on the glass, stocked cartons of milk
chilled inside buzzing machines.
Dates stamped in black, a calf’s little
tombstone to its mother, each one.
* "Calves of dairy cows are generally separated from their mothers within the first 24 hours after birth. The majority of the milk thus enters the food market and not the stomachs of the calves." - Early separation of cow and calf has long-term effects on social behavior, ScienceDaily.com, 28 April 2015.
- Amber Shockley
- 1 min read
We’re as blind as need be.
Bride and groom, a veil
between them. Bitter bricks,
and God a mason.
Bride grooms a veil
to wear her whole life.
God is hell’s mason,
the same as heaven’s.
To wear her life,
she’ll build a lie just
the same as heaven’s.
We’re as blind as need be.