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by poetry Amber L. Cook


When I emptied the contents of your skull

                           I was monogrammed into
synapses you would never use,
                              synapses that I snapped
like green beans, fresh
   from the garden bordered by mesh wire,


where I planted you as a seed
                            & covered you with soil &
gave you water like you’d bud
into a color other than
                                      red overlapping red
down your temple where I traced


my fingers in lines trying to map
                    my way to words you left sitting in
the saliva around your ceramic mug,
                                       eggs laying stagnant in
rain from weeks before,
                                           drying up in the sun.

I do not imagine the mesh wire to outline
                                  the perimeter of your body
or the preparatory paint recoating the outside of
your white house
                       where you would leave her alone
in photograph after photograph


for the photo album she kept
                                      on the nightstand and I
do not admit to your exiting before
entering, do not admit to your wound still emptying
                                                            out years after, 
or years before I could capsulate you in my palm.

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Amber L. Cook is a senior creative writing and English secondary-education major from Long Valley, New Jersey. She has a dual passion for modifying the poetic form and teaching her students. She has formerly been published in The Susquehanna Review, Prick of the Spindle, Outrageous Fortune, and Rivercraft. Her plans include getting an MFA in Poetry sometime in the near future.

Coming next week: poetry by Alex Guarco