Pathos or a compulsion
to turn everything outside
into me. I want to steal your pain—
relieve you—but
it’s a lie. I cannot feel
the flare-ups erupting
inside your muscles, joints, trust. Only
a greedy desire to conceal
my own fear inside walls
of an ancient cave
I’ll never enter. Not to see the primitive
finger flutings overhead—I become entangled
in this grotesque silence.
No precious space, no
books framed to hang
on walls she would only want
to move at the moment
of willingness. That dandelion
tea she spilled on
printouts of online
articles about his song
without dance—not necessary.
An accident she could explain
away with a pilot light
that flickers out—after,
always after the water
boils. The dust of her breathing
skin gets in a little
each night
while she sleeps without fear.
Cave walls inside
a candle prophesize fear
and anxiety lessening
as the flame flickers deeper
into itself. And do you recognize it—am I
about to embrace a moment
that ignited you a century ago? And you
100 years ahead, this could be yours.
this day? It will not wake up
more than a dull white
of clouds and snow—an ash
missing a few waves. Must make
do with light tricks
weeks before winter. Find a way
to harness the energy
it will take to break
open the hours
to unclutter fear
from the walk.
Someone drove a Nash
rambler into my heart.
See these burn scars. I’m knitting them
into poems fast
as I can. Fear is
a cross-stitch I’m
still learning how to work
into a pattern. Perfection
is for the gods.
At the corner of Thomas
and Upton—a crossing that wasn’t
supposed to happen—she walks under the right canopy
of trees. A layer of fear shed, it leaves
no mark on the sidewalk.
Some spills are meant to remain
invisible to everything but the slightest breeze.
After all these years, all
you have said, you’re still
afraid
of him. He has only a few
words left. They won’t hurt. Rarely did.
It was the ones
he threw at those around you.
To be so privileged
can be a burden. In his weakened
state, new hip just beginning to settle
into the mechanism that is
what’s left
of his life, why
this fear? Yes,
you’re losing him
the way we all lose
one another. There are no guarantees,
no ultimate reprieves. This is a slow burn
singe around your original
edges. No way comes without terror.
Whose? Yours? His?
All of those others?
With the spoken
language disintegrated,
what’s left is this raw
love. You must look it
in the eye. Don’t turn
your head off his
steady gaze. Remember,
who he is.
I let the spider go. If
the cat gets it,
that’s his business. I’m employed
by other fears—larger,
invisible, transportable up
the bedroom wall
by other means.
She collects all the fear
she has gathered for 21 years,
puts it in a jar and seals it tight,
drops the jar into
the drink. Without it,
her days begin to count.
And I know I will
die. It could be now. How
will I lift this foot?
And I don’t, and I do.
Stairs to an elevated pedestrian
bridge over nine lanes
of highway. The linking flight
between two floors
within an office, a red
ladder against that brick
wall. A green one
in a park that’s crumbling
faster than I can reach
the landing—any one over
water or a creek’s dry
well. I’ll never be
a man on a wire,
a woman ready
to run for help
when he falls.
It’s a healthy one—this fear.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 