In Absence Of

by Sophie Hoss

And this is what it is: 
A hand up my shirt in the quickening violet, 
a caul of dusk holding galaxies of night. 
It isn’t honest, but it’s all I have. 

And yet:
Staring down the barrel of the afterwards,
faceless bodies swap bones like their silhouettes have names.
I walk past the old noose just to hear its whistle
flirting in the wind.

And still:
This is what I asked for.

And now:
My thumb is on the pulse of the hummingbird’s throat.
I think of the rabbit heart I share 
with my mother 
and the wet hiccup of the stethoscope, 
our love and its murmurs.

And all the same:
Lightning strikes thrice, but all I remember is the thunder. 
Snow is what I wish for now,
and it falls in rivers from the winter mountains.

And anyway:
I didn’t close my eyes, 
but the drop surprised me just the same. 

And even so:
I dreamt last night that I bore a daughter in a tub of water 
while a storm battered the roof 
and the thrashing trees wailed their branches against the windows.
I named my daughter Rain. When I woke, 
I could not recall even her face, 
but in that deepest, oldest realm, I would have offered up 
my heart as her whetting stone 
and my throat as her knife. 

And again:
I will not create something I cannot keep
or love something I wish I could hate. 
Every time I change my mind,
the rain turns to snow 
and back again.

And again ::

       Again    :

And 
again :

I want to be alone,
but not like this.

Again:::

I want to be alone,
but 
again:

The place where it hurts is here. 

And again:
The cysts in the sonogram blink empty eyes 
like universes of unbeholding
and I pop each one between my thumb 
and forefinger. 

Again:
Life is so rarely what we ask of it 
but
I did not want it to be like this.

Again : I
     do not want it 
to be like 
this.

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ABOUT THE CREATOR

Sophie Hoss loves the ocean and is in bed by 9pm every night. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing and Literature from Stony Brook University, and her fiction and poetry have appeared in BOMB, The Baffler, The LA Review, Identity Theory, and elsewhere. She reads for Fractured Lit and is a contributing editor for The Southampton Review. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and her mini-chapbook Little Divinities—forthcoming publication with New American Press—was the runner-up for the 2023 MAYDAY Poetry Prize. You can read more of her work at sophiehosswriting.com.

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