Nights and Days Without You, Brother + One More
BY TAYLOR BURGIN
Nights and days without you, brother
I must learn to be careful—
and what I mean is
it’s the absence of you that matters,
or the idea of your absence
Yet, it all looks the same; the light
falls warmly the way it did before.
Though I wear pastels more than I use to.
Because you left me your clothes,
When you left for New York. And it’s all I can see myself wearing now.
The house is restless, but your room is still.
I know we are looking at the same stars, or the lack of them; drowned by different city lights.
But the moon is the same.
The moon you used to tell me to take a bite of each night from the window sill.
But I’m not hungry if you’re not here.
So I pinch off pieces of the moon and tuck it into napkins under my pillow,
and I will wait for you to come home.
So you can taste each night I spent without you.
After he
I kept myself to be she
who tucks secrets beneath my thighs
like words on napkins for him to find,
and lustful sounds sent dripping
in the valley of my breasts.
He used to tell me
He could never find a comparison for the constellation of freckles on my chest,
That he so commonly had mistaken
for a field of honeysuckles.
I taught myself to be she,
After he,
a wildflower in a field I laid on my chest.
About the Author
Taylor Burgin is a high school student in Miama, FL.
