An Ode, of course, to Sylvia
When you decided you were going to do it, tucking the thick blankets in the creases of the doorframe, as if they too were your children. Holding space there, for that small sliver of void, separating you from your own. Did you notice even passively, the clock thrumming on the wall, languidly lapping up the hours until your chosen undoing? And what of the man? The man who you had children with, shared a bed with, read his poems, loved him. Held him. Desired him. Was it his face you saw, looking back at you in the deep color-less abyss, its null disguising itself as something black? Your own personal gas chamber. A turn of a screw. Oh, kitchen. Oh, womb of the domestic. How you play out the hours for us, ticking metronomes of hips and thighs and ass. Before you went, did you see him, fucking her, as if a collision could happen for any stars?
Savannah Williams
Savannah Williams is in her thesis year at Texas State’s MFA program, for poetry. Her thesis director is Dr. Cecily Parks. She has been writing poetry all of her life. She is from Austin, Texas.