Two Decades Is a Distance That Matters & Other Poems
Audrey Joy Carver
US-97
the car crumpled quickly like panties on the wrong carpet.
if he really wanted to end it, there were easier ways but,
he didn’t want to pump the brakes and I wasn’t driving.
“is there still love on the other side of the windshield?”
he asked and my back told him, “I guess we’ll find out.”
you too would confuse a shard of laminated glass for
a diamond at blue hour in the glare of ambulance lights,
but only if you’ve never seen a real one before.
Two Decades is a Distance That Matters
Baseball games and trips to the zoo –
Are they just fodder
for your father-daughter checklist?
Reckless of you to assume
I grew up bothered I was a bastard.
You think some chatter
and a necklace makes us cool,
while I swallow my truths
to get through the food?
I know you want to be more than
“Father” now but really, don’t bother.
Can you prove you know me from plaster?
Two decades is a distance that matters.
“We” meaning “I” meaning “seed”
I would steal a thousand pearls
from the minds of a thousand girls
and pay debt to my own time
to share the world with her.
Her and the body known as him –
wait, I see the trap that we are in.
To distinguish between us two
would mean there were two, when
really we are one, long-divvied.
“We” meaning “I” meaning “seed.”
Audrey Joy Carver is a New Jersey resident working in trade book publishing though she’s originally from the Pacific Northwest, where she was adopted. She has a B.A. in English Literature, and as of the time of this writing, her other work has been featured by the Bureau of Complaint, and is forthcoming in The Bitchin’ Kitsch.
*Image by Parsa on Unsplash
