The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Otherlight by Jill Mceldowney

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BOUND FOR

Lightning so angry half the lights floated
blacked, flickered, came back

            and I filled my bathtub with water in case of a true outage,
an emergency-emergency. Why were you

at the bottom of those pools that—in the dark—
beware me of blood? I look to the water. I see

you clawing at your own throat,

strangers promising
                     He’s in a better place.

          What better—what life
after this—too late

for naloxone, too late for Heaven,

new earth. I sit here perpetually
              inventing lives more terrifying to live—

as if reality were not enough. I hope you never know
how far, how deep
my grief dragged me—the everydayness



of walking empty
                              grocery stores, parking lots, quiet fluorescents,
the quiet telephone.

I think that I am alive—once,

                                                    you said Lobsters,
you said something with their chromosomes,
you said the only thing time does for them is grow—

I think that I am alive now
because you are not.

If there is a world in which the dead speak, let them
tell me what it’s worth—your name
so difficult to say.  

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