“You will be out with friends when the news of her existence will be accidentally spilled all over your bar stool. Respond calmly as if it was only a change in weather, a punch line you saw coming. After your fourth shot of cheap liquor, leave the image of him kissing another woman in the toilet. In the morning, her name will be in every headline: car crash, robbery, flood. When he calls you, ignore the hundreds of ropes untangling themselves in your stomach. You are the best friend again. He invites you over for dinner and you say yes too easily. Remind yourself this isn’t special, it’s only dinner, everyone has to eat. When he greets you at the door, do not think for one second you are the reason he wore cologne tonight. In his kitchen, he will hand-feed you a piece of red pepper. His laugh will be low and warm and it will make you feel like candlelight. Do not think this is special. Do not count on your fingers the number of freckles you could kiss too easily. Try to think of pilot lights and olive oil, not everything you have ever loved about him, or it will suddenly feel boiling and possible and so close. You will find her bobby pins laying innocently on his bathroom sink. Her bobby pins. They look like the wiry legs of spiders, splinters of her undressing in his bed. Do not say anything. Think of stealing them, wearing them home in your hair. When he hugs you goodbye, let him kiss you on the forehead. Settle for target practice. At home, you will picture her across town pressing her fingers into his back like wet cement. You will wonder if she looks like you, if you are two bedrooms in the same house. Did he fall for her features like rearranged furniture? When he kisses her, does she taste like wet paint? You will want to call him. You will go as far as holding the phone in your hand, imagine telling him unimaginable things like “You are always ticking inside of me and I dream of you more often than I don’t. My body is a dead language and you pronounce each word perfectly.” Do not call him. Fall asleep to the hum of the VCR. She must make him happy. She must be his favorite place in Minneapolis. You are a souvenir shop, where he goes to remember how much people miss him when he is gone.”
—Sierra DeMulder, Unrequited Love Poem“Don’t worry. The acne will go away, sort of. You will stop fighting with your sisters when they go to college. This will be because of two things: your inability to steal their clothing and the realization that they are older, cooler versions of you. Your bully will end up shaving her head and going to jail or she will become a lawyer and have a nice car and six babies. You will have no idea. You will forget what she looks like, remember her the way one remembers a splinter. You will stop loving sharp things. You will learn how to make your bed without being forced or threatened. You will break up with your high school sweetheart. I know, this is a surprise but trust me. It is the right thing. Yes, he loves you but it is a smothering love, the way a dog nurses an open wound, all bared teeth and tongues. When you leave him, it will not feel like crushing a light bulb in your hand — more like slowly, so slowly, removing glass from inside your palm. For years after him, you will let your heart hang open like a soup kitchen. This is not a bad thing, more a lesson in proportions. After graduation, you will change a hundred times over, like a revolving door, a waterfall. One day, you will learn how to give and receive love like an open window and it will feel like summer every day. One day, everything will make sense.”
—Sierra DeMulder, “Reassurance to Sierra In High School”“I filled my gas tank to 33 dollars and 33 cents and told you it was for you because it was your favorite number. I organized our belongings (white t-shirts—books—toothbrushes— baby, this is where we keep our sweaters) as if using the word “our” would embed myself into what you call home. I bought flowers from a homeless man because you are a botany major. I wanted to bring them to you, wilting and loveless, and show you how I can nurture something worth saving. There is a five-finger scar above my breast. There is an orchestra on my neck shaped like your pulse from all the nights you held me the way you only hold something slipping. There are 6 states pressed like stubborn flowers between the last time I kissed you and today, but you still feel like a sound caught in my throat.”
—
Sierra DeMulder, “During the Month it Took You to Leave Me”
“When the apocalypse comes and all the windows are shattered and the car tires have melted into the pavement, once all the schools and hospitals and skyscrapers have folded in on themselves and the last street lamp has wilted like a starving flower, I will still want to fuck you. We both know I can't handle stress well. I'm anxious, claustrophobic, and things between us haven't always been easy — you nitpick, I'm stubborn, and we have been fighting over pointless things like directions, how you never take me anywhere nice anymore. I saw the way you smiled at that poet and her pomegranate metaphors SUCKED. But sweetheart, when a meteor crashes through our kitchen ceiling, I will not panic. When the locusts envelop the neighborhood and our shower water thickens to blood, I promise not to bite my nails. I won't even get angry when you don't answer your phone — even as the pavement begins to crack and spew like a rotten egg, you will not get 47 missed calls in 4 minutes (*even though we both know it's possible). When the news anchor finally tells us the truth — that there is no hope — I won't even thinking about joining the angry mob outside our burning apartment building. Baby, no. I will put on my least flammable negligee and I will find you. I will crawl to you across this curdling parking lot of a city, lick your body new again like my tongue is God's hand trying to erase and recreate the earth. For 6 days straight, we will be what makes the sidewalk blister. Day 1: in the beginning, I will find you, pull you into me. Day 2: we will make the earth and the sky jealous. Day 3: I want you to fuck me bent over a crumpled taxi. 4: in the graveyard of a strip mall. 5: on the steps of the capital, in every store, on every mattress that isn't on fire. This world is a melting candle we're only using for foreplay. Day 6: You may think I'm in denial, that I am avoiding the bigger issue here but you didn't even look at me the last time you said I love you and, shit, if it didn't feel like the end of the world. I know this can't be healthy (pretending everything is on fire), but baby, we could be the most beautiful wreckage in all this smoke. When the apocalypse does come, I will rebuild our city with my tongue. I will suck this world's ashes from your fingers. I will refuse to let the fires of this hell be the only thing that makes us sweat. When the apocalypse comes, so will we. ”
—“When The Apocalypse Comes,” Sierra DeMulder, The Bones Below“You will be out with friends when the news of her existence will be accidentally spilled all over your bar stool. Respond calmly as if it was only a change in weather, a punch line you saw coming. After your fourth shot of cheap liquor, leave the image of him kissing another woman in the toilet. In the morning, her name will be in every headline: car crash, robbery, flood. When he calls you, ignore the hundreds of ropes untangling themselves in your stomach. You are the best friend again. He invites you over for dinner and you say yes too easily. Remind yourself this isn’t special, it’s only dinner, everyone has to eat. When he greets you at the door, do not think for one second you are the reason he wore cologne tonight. In his kitchen, he will hand-feed you a piece of red pepper. His laugh will be low and warm and it will make you feel like candlelight. Do not think this is special. Do not count on your fingers the number of freckles you could kiss too easily. Try to think of pilot lights and olive oil, not everything you have every loved about him, or it will suddenly feel boiling and possible and so close. You will find her bobby pins laying innocently on his bathroom sink. Her bobby pins. They look like the wiry legs of spiders, splinters of her undressing in his bed. Do not say anything. Think of stealing them, wearing them home in your hair. When he hugs you goodbye, let him kiss you on the forehead. Settle for target practice. At home, you will picture her across town pressing her fingers into his back like wet cement. You will wonder if she looks like you, if you are two bedrooms in the same house. Did he fall for her features like rearranged furniture? When he kisses her, does she taste like wet paint? You will want to call him. You will go as far as holding the phone in your hand, imagine telling him unimaginable things like you are always ticking inside of me and I dream of you more often than I don’t. My body is a dead language and you pronounce each word perfectly. Do not call him. Fall asleep to the hum of the VCR. She must make him happy. She must be She must be his favorite place in Minneapolis. You are a souvenir shop, where he goes to remember how much people miss him when he is gone.”
—Sierra DeMulder, Unrequited Love Poem
“You will be out with friends when the news of her existence will be accidentally spilled all over your bar stool. Respond calmly as if it was only a change in weather, a punch line you saw coming. After your fourth shot of cheap liquor, leave the image of him kissing another woman in the toilet. In the morning, her name will be in every headline: car crash, robbery, flood. When he calls you, ignore the hundreds of ropes untangling themselves in your stomach. You are the best friend again. He invites you over for dinner and you say yes too easily. Remind yourself this isn’t special, it’s only dinner, everyone has to eat. When he greets you at the door, do not think for one second you are the reason he wore cologne tonight. In his kitchen, he will hand-feed you a piece of red pepper. His laugh will be low and warm and it will make you feel like candlelight. Do not think this is special. Do not count on your fingers the number of freckles you could kiss too easily. Try to think of pilot lights and olive oil, not everything you have ever loved about him, or it will suddenly feel boiling and possible and so close. You will find her bobby pins laying innocently on his bathroom sink. Her bobby pins. They look like the wiry legs of spiders, splinters of her undressing in his bed. Do not say anything. Think of stealing them, wearing them home in your hair. When he hugs you goodbye, let him kiss you on the forehead. Settle for target practice. At home, you will picture her across town pressing her fingers into his back like wet cement. You will wonder if she looks like you, if you are two bedrooms in the same house. Did he fall for her features like rearranged furniture? When he kisses her, does she taste like wet paint? You will want to call him. You will go as far as holding the phone in your hand, imagine telling him unimaginable things like you are always ticking inside of me and I dream of you more often than I don’t. My body is a dead language and you pronounce each word perfectly. Do not call him. Fall asleep to the hum of the VCR. She must make him happy. She must be She must be his favorite place in Minneapolis. You are a souvenir shop, where he goes to remember how much people miss him when he is gone.”
—Sierra DeMulder, Unrequited Love Poem
Facts Written From An Airplane
1.
The Victorians honored human hair
because it was the only trait of the body
that remained after death. I shaved my legs
in your shower. I hid long strands of myself
in your pillowcases. That is all that is left.2.
Thinking of someone else during sex
is a cardinal sin punishable by nothing.3.
The heart is wanting. The heart
is perpetually two-years-old. The heart
is bad at sharing. The heart is a hungry
gas tank. The heart is not a metaphor.4.
When the teacher asks you what grade
you think you deserve, you will always say B+.5.
90% of Americans will vote from Obama
because the night before the election, he will
slow dance with his wife and kiss her forehead
and we will want so badly to believe that
they actually fucking love each other.6.
Writing a list of ways I could be better
and writing a suicide note are the same thing.7.
The heart lives in a packed elevator.
It doesn’t know what floor its waiting for
but it wants it wants it wants to get off.8.
The Victorians believe when you write a poem
from an airplane that moment becomes suspended
in the sky forever, like a ornament in God’s mobile.
So now you know: somewhere between Phoenix
and Las Vegas, a thousand miles up, there you are
like a grocery list pinned to blue.
Sierra DeMulder
