You take a deep breath
and you walk through the doors…
The words go blaring from their tomb,
dark stranger of stars.
It isn’t fair because he can’t see
the highway for what it is, the chance
he might die, here now, or anywhere.
He sees the stars through sunlight,
feeling the heart
of the radio as reason for his fool-heartedness.
Somebody tells you they love you
you’re gonna believe them…
Handsome smile, ushering in shadows
he loves & I, the woman who lives
silently in them. He’s sailed
asphalt to this point not knowing.
When all you wanted
was to be wanted…
He succumbs to the inevitable
(not yet fifteen himself),
dust forever thickening his bones,
hearing her breathe once more,
singing, imagining it’s where she lives,
where she writes her lyrics,
the way they call on him.
Don’t forget to look before you fall…
If it’s true he’s falling,
I’ll tip back my head & guiltily sing.
Ariana D. Den Bleyker is a Pittsburgh native currently residing in New York’s Hudson Valley, where she is a wife and mother of two. When she’s not writing, she’s spending time with her family and every once in a while sleeps. She is the author of three collections, including Wayward Lines (RAW ArT PRESS, 2015), the chapbooks Forgetting Aesop (Bandini Books, LLC, 2011), Naked Animal (Flutter Press, 2012), My Father Had a Daughter (Alabaster Leaves Publishing, 2013), Hatched from Bone (Flutter Press, 2014), On Coming of Age and Stitches (Origami Poems Project, 2014), On This and That (Bitterzoet Press, 2015), Strangest Sea (Porkbelly Press, 2015), Beautiful Wreckage (Flutter Press, 2015), Unsent (Origami Poems Project, 2015), The Peace of Wild Things (Porkbelly Press, 2015), Knee Deep in Bone (Hermeneutic Chaos Press, 2015), Birds Never Sing in Caves (dancing girl press, 2016), Cutting Eyes from Ghosts (Blood Pudding Press, 2017), Scars Are Memories Bleeding Through (Yavanika Press, 2018), A Bridge of You (Origami Poems Project, 2019), and Even the Statue Weeps (dancing girl press, forthcoming 2019). She is also the author of three crime novellas, a novelette, and an experimental memoir. She hopes you’ll fall in love with her words.
Eunoia Review 