In the Diseased Light
by Heidi Seaborn
All day the news darkening.
I imagine walking into a gleaming store—
We create a border, batten
the windows, latch the doors.
In this languid time inside of ourselves,
days drip like candlewax and all we want is
an arrow of birds. Instead we hang
like a lightbulb, necessary, without glamour.
We keep watch for orcas,
for messages—bottled and buoyant.
Dark data pools overnight into lakes then flows
while we wash our hands of everything.
The street scrubbed clean. No man with his dog,
no wailing toddler kicking against her mother,
or kids crouched down smoking pot, or flinging
a frisbee.
In the diseased light of evening, we quiet the murmurs
with alcohol. I feel our ragged edges. You unbutton
my blouse. Flesh is a soft word. I let it spread down
my tongue. Will we learn a new vocabulary, alone
in our home, the world still outside, ticking quietly?
Then I Slept
by Heidi Seaborn
First there was the lemon peel
of morning. Then the empty space
in the bed, still warm, my love’s body
remembered in the slight indentation.
Then the clatter of oatmeal and tea
and beyond that a neighbor’s whistle
for their dog, a dog’s deep throated
bark, a man calling out as a car door slams.
I have slept in, slept through a night
like every night as chaos presses
its ugly face against our windows
Yet, I slept without Ambien’s dark
fist pressing my pillow. Slept all night.
And then the next. The deep basin
of my mind filling with dreams
arriving now after all I have
lived through. My love questions
God’s existence, but I hear the weather
is warming this week. Our plum tree’s
tufted in white blossoms, daphne
& hyacinth perfume through an open
window and a hummingbird dips
and whirs over the forsythia,
In the stacked white boxes
up the hill, the honeybees doze.
Heidi Seaborn is Editorial Director of The Adroit Journal and author of the debut collection Give a Girl Chaos (C&R Press/Mastodon Books, 2019) and three chapbooks. Since Heidi started writing in 2016, she’s won or been shortlisted for over two dozen awards and her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies such as Frontier, Greensboro Review, The Missouri Review, Mississippi Review, Penn Review and Tar River. She’s currently an MFA candidate at NYU. heidiseabornpoet.com