Sunset Space
by Olivia Milan
The two pieces I have submitted are a salute to the past, to what is no longer there. Whether it is a place or a person that has changed from before, I find that the feelings accompanying the shift are often of longing nostalgia or painful comfort. I experience both happy remembrance and disconsolate cognizance thinking of these things; I am grateful for their existence, that I have the memory of them inside me still. There is always solace in the ability to remember things I have lost, even though they are gone.
A child named Clementine
A xylophone-like sound,
Syncopated with percussion,
Childish and orange,
Young and dated.
An ambiguous sensation,
I wish it were so easy to return,
To take up the ancient black pen
And water brush.
I hold the child like a heavy instrument,
A time machine,
Golden-penny eyes,
And I keep her against my cheek, on the glass.
Her words have no year,
No face;
She is a bright sound ringing
Until slowly, the ear becomes unable to hear it.
I miss her how I fall sleep,
Vaguely drifting, pushing against the memory,
remembering amongst all resistance.
Sunset space
I feel you in the reflection
Of a window,
Golden in that sunless shadow,
Eating the light.
I see you at the bottom of my cup;
Transparent eyes and smile,
You hug the glass like something I had tried to clean from it
But left intact for no reason.
You haunt every surface in my apartment,
And I am starting to hear you in my music,
Breathe you in my air.
I no longer see bicolored sunsets the same;
Now, there is sky, and there is the blush on your cheeks,
Burnt into my mind as if I held a match to it.
I am trying to see my own face in these things,
But I find that you live in this space now; it is
As if I am the one haunting it.