HOME WHEN YOU RETURN

by Mazzy Sleep

For M., M. & M.

I.

The sun in the morning.
It was snowing so hard it seemed like
it had always been snowing, since Eden,
since creation, and would maybe never stop.
I didn’t know what I wished for,
but anything permanent scared me, always,
as a rule.
Inside the house, I could smell a pie baking.
And the curtains were like little bundles of flax,
brazen ochre with little ruddy flowers.
All around me, the air swelled, and it slitted,
like the flank
of a small startled animal, cowering,
then caving in.
Time is the dust that collects
over everything,
even on the surface that you touch or cover.
I guess I must have been wrong about the pie,
because after dinner, nothing was served.

II.

Then: more snow, making the earth
seem strangely level. The sun in the morning,
the good hound in the grass. Sensation of emptiness again,
the hollows in the earth now filled
with snow and soil. All the while,
the good hound treading through the garden,
enunciating his noble shadow over the rapt white snow,
the ashen ground. Weeds trickle
greenish and vivid
around his paws, combed
through by wind as distant and graceful
as a half-remembered song.
The empty schools and factories standing just off the horizon.
The snowflakes like a million weddings between the sky and the ground.

III.

Under the table, the dog licks my ankles, like there is sugar there,
treasure socketed inside my bones. He is wrong: I have nothing.
The gold curtains have been cleaned, or replaced,
because the stains are gone.
I lie in my bed
for longer than I should lie in my bed, to the point
of questioning whether perhaps
the bed lies in me, and I am unsure
whether I hear or dream the sounds of figures stirring downstairs.
The sound is rich and full and
multiplied in layers: there are so many of them,
jostling about down there. There is chatter,
and there is laughter,
soft yet sonorous
like bubbles rising to the rim of the glass.
But then somebody tips the glass over.
And it goes tilting and tumbling all over the white tiles, newly polished, newly destroyed,
and I awaken beneath
the bright sun
and its white eye prodding. I awaken,
and there is nothing lying before me.
There is no future,
there is no cedar chest, there is
not anything
at all
anymore.

IV.

And then, repetition, the most effacing hand of all.
Light falling across the dinner table, then the dinner table vanishing.
It is an earthly grievance: we are beings, this takes place over a period of time.

Out of the white sun,
into a pretty room.
We will continue living until we die. We will continue
holding this inside of us until we begin
living.

We will keep holding it
till we are betrayed by the desire.

V.

And then,
despite everything, a car:
not now, but in the distant future, or in the distant past, roving
over a dark land.
You remember it now, if only faintly, sheep like snowflakes over bright
feathered green. Blue sky and watertower,
making something deeper than oneself, the wound
scabbing over, the world at your feet;
this is what you have always done,
let the dog lick at your ankles, imagine it as the earth and air and the
sea, the wretched heaven which
chokes out everything like a most admirable weed.
Little patch of fabric held against the heart. And maybe
there really is a pie, waiting in the cupboards. Maybe, but only maybe.

Here it is:
here it was:
be honest: for it all looks the same to you.
Coolness and darkness,
then ticked orange light, leaning decisively
against the white radiator.

VI.

So here it is, the thing we meant to say,
we thought we were saying.
Maybe it will amount to something in the end.
Or maybe it won’t. A long time before:
it is not exactly a place of origin, it is just
the place that you are.

It is summer here, not winter. The snow, like the sheep,
a million miles behind, then ahead. The sky is blue and everlasting.
Far off, a little stand of trees in the distance over the fence.

The dog is in the yard. He is young now, he knows nothing
of us; small and timid, from the shelter
direct. Maybe
it is divine, as you once prayed,
image of the afterlife: your mother’s stooping lilies
instead of the asphodels of which they spoke
so extensively, the sky beginning to pale,
filling with light.

And the dog again, his
nose buried in the earth like a
blackened island on a
bloody sea. What is he looking for,
what does he think he has found?
Projecting himself into the future, his long
scabbed tail, the snail’s
crushed shell?

And then dust, collecting, the hand’s long sweep. Time returns
to itself again, like an animal falling
at its master’s feet.
And the stand of trees, rustling
softly, shedding a leaf or two onto the feathered green ground.

And in the corner of the yard, the pond beginning to shimmer,
catching jellied novas of white light.
And between your hands, a single star
bursting, not understanding
what is to come next.

Light dying on the horizon of its mother.

Everything to follow, a light,
a kind of song

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ABOUT THE CREATOR

Mazzy Sleep is a 13-year-old living in Iowa City. She has written two feature screenplays, four novels, and hundreds upon hundreds of poems and short stories. Her work has been published in Literary Review of Canada, Geist, CV2, Blackbird, The Margins, The Minnesota Review, Maudlin House, White Wall Review, Queen’s Quarterly, and elsewhere. Her poem "Heart Medicine" was named a Notable Poem in the Best Canadian Poetry 2024 anthology.

Website: mazzysleep.com

Instagram: @mazzysleep

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