after Terrance Hayes
By KATE BESTALL
a poem is a time machine & rules of time travel apply: you know,
there is nothing you can change that hasn’t already been changed.
in this one, the rain rises. we fall
back into the storm. the years collect
in a dustpan. i’ve never had a year
i would choose to undo. & by that i mean,
towards the end of the last apocalypse, my high school parking lot flooded & i found myself
waiting it out behind a windshield. you know, you can hear it inside the school
every time it rains, it sounds like the end of the world. hail & thunder &
anything but rain. that hallway with its impossible
roof, like waves crashing down despite barrier & distance.
reckoning.
yesterday, the sky flashed bright, daytime glory at nearly midnight,
the lights flickered in my room. sam said weeks ago that everything
has felt biblical lately: the gnats swarming the bathroom, hair dye bleeding the sink red. i am ready
for the end. the thought repeating in my mind: am i ever gonna sing
again? what responsibilities do we have in metaphor? a poem
is either a letter or a prayer & a prayer is just a letter to god.
when you send the text, i’m thinking about that one time you were saying,
how passed away is also a euphemism. everything i text you is also a euphemism,
for something like i love you i love you i love you. lately, i have been texting you
without euphemism in the hopes that you will text back & say you are okay. which is,
of course, a euphemism for i am living through the unimaginable. texts are a lot like letters,
in that they can sometimes also be prayers. i want to lock you in a poem,
where everything bad has already happened & nothing more can hurt you now. a windshield
is a barrier between ourselves & hurt, they shatter all the time & that’s only if
you’re lucky enough to be behind one at all. it turns out that a place
doesn’t become any safer once you leave it. i can write it
so it sounds like thunder. i can write that what broke the windows
was only hail, it doesn’t make it true. it doesn’t make me there. i left,
& now i’ll never be there again.
Writer | Kate Bestall ‘27 | kbestall27@amherst.edu
Editor | Siani Ammons ‘27 | sammons27@amherst.edu