shishi odoshi style, you expect me to tip forward under the weight
of remembrance: memories predicting mistakes fluid enough to collect
when you pour them into me, but amassing only feathery warmth
so that I stay cloudgazing, won’t fall on my face or panic, scare you off.
it’s how we’ve internalized the seesaw of days on the road, the
pendulum of hours, minutes since our tires rolled up the asphalt
out of this state into parchment for a glass bottle to kiss the river home.
it might have been selfish to christen our hatchback with it instead,
but what isn’t? the voyage doesn’t choose an aquarium, and if given
the choice, the schooner wouldn’t choose the stillness of a mantelpiece —
no matter how many components are crafted & secured outside the glass
first. I could reveal all our kept, unspoken guilt, like how tomorrow is
made of shattered marbles I put back together so you wouldn’t see.
but there are many things to tell you. there are many
things to not tell you, and at the center of that Venn
diagram is an oyster — waiting to be shucked.
——
Logan Ellis is the author of Eymologizer (Maudlin House 2017) and holds an MFA from California College of the Arts, above his head, while the waters rise. This poem takes place in a story told in reverse; other pieces are published in Little River and Fuck Art, Let’s Dance. His work also appears in Unbroken Journal, Fog Machine, and Sparkle&Blink, among others.