Route 2 - Lucy Angell Anderson

Maybe you think I’m beautiful because it’s autumn.

Everything looks gorgeous when bathed

in honeyed light.

Your hand cradles the clutch

when it isn’t wound through mine.

You say you make me so happy

I hear we are sinking to the bottom of a black pond.

When water chokes your lungs, I will not know how to save you.

In my brain’s catacombs, a long-gone boy is killing

a cigarette on the pale field of my hand. I am silent and still.

Music pours from the stereo like water from a pitcher.

A deer is dying on the side of the road,

limbs bent wrong,

velvet antlers intact, reaching towards the sky.

I want to unwrap my heart like peeling

beeswax paper off an encased plum, give you

the pit to hold.

You trace your thumb across my topography of scars.

You see the green rings around my pupils

as my nails tap the dash.

I have never known ease, but I will tell you of

deadbolts on my bedroom door,

fumes, a metallic click.

My game of roulette.

You say I never want to run out of road.

I say I am smoke through your fingers.

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Lucy Angell Anderson is a poet pursuing her B.A. in Writing at Simmons University. Her work has been published in Outlander Magazine. She lives in Boston.