The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Otherlight by Jill Mceldowney

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Catherine Garbinsky, is from Otherlight by Jill Mceldowney (YesYes Books 2023).

DREAM TREE

We are playing that child’s game of guess what I’m saying underwater,

a game of who can stay
submerged longest,
             who can listen longest to the voices of the dead.

You say: Give me your watch. I’ll time you. How long can you hold—?

And how precious is time,
how long wine waits to peak,
how long do we have
              before time fills our love with blood?

I look up at you across the swimming pool and I should not be afraid,
              I can see the bottom of the water
and it is safe and blue and clear
but already you are beginning to blur.

Time takes everything.
Wait with me, wait
for fingers of ice to climb you
the last possible moment
             before rising
                            for air or to leave.

But how could I ever
leave you?

Who better
             knows my gravity? Who will love me knowing
the cost of love is love? Who else
loves me blackout
             drunk, out of my mind, vicious

with this rare, never want this night to end,
with this leave your life,
kind of love?

You bring me wine for my hangovers,
you call me back from
blood on the brain
            when I inhale too much water.

Time long stops the heart
This place
            is the place where you leave me.
I can’t tell what you are shouting into the water
            but the question never was what are you trying to say

it is how long will you stay
knowing all that we are promised is loss.
Promise me

when you think of me
            you will think of me

as the river of light
             you would do anything to cross.
Promise me I will see you again
             even though I will never

see you again. We will never repeat—

               not in the same way,
not exactly,
not when more
               than a swimming pool stands between us.

Each time the dream comes after

I will have less.
I will go back
              to before I saw the sky.

I will take you with me
I will take you back

into this water. I will never move from this where,
this water where
              always

I find you.

Jill Mceldowney (she/her) is the author of the full-length collections Alydar (YesYes Books, forthcoming 2026) and Otherlight (YesYes Books 2023), winner of a North American Book Award. She is found and editor of Madhouse Press. She is a recipient of a grant from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico. Her previously published word can be found in publications such as The Academy of American Poets, Prairie Schooner, Tupelo Quarterly, Frontier, Muzzle, and other notable publications.

Catherine Garbinsky (she/they) is a writer living in Knoxville, Tennessee. They received their MFA in Poetry from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, where they are now a PhD candidate. Catherine’s poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She has written two chapbooks: All Spells Are Strong Here (Ghost City Press, 2018) and Even Curses End (Animal Heart Press, 2019), and her work has been featured in Yes Poetry, Coffin Bell Journal, Cream City Review, and elsewhere.