THIS LIFE OF MINE
There’s a peculiar kind of sunshine in your bones,
she tells me, like that of a soft spring
evening. I am sitting on the bathroom floor
using the soggy bath mat as a blanket
rocking back and forth—
A sudden premonition, a wide-eyed gut feeling:
this is not a good thing.
On those nights, my father and I
would sit and wait
for the bats to wake.
It has been a dozen years
and yet, a sob.
My girl, she calls,
what’s this life of yours
about? Out with it! You think
you’re evil, a goblin in human skin, just say it,
and let me rub the knots from your neck.
Oh, I don’t know I don’t know sometimes
I feel like I miss all the meaning the baby lies
on the edge of the bathtub and cries and cries
this life is not mine
and yet, it is.
And I know it’s true, we miss all the meaning,
let us trace a face in life’s foggy mirror
A dozen years, or more
we trace the blue tile
We slug down bath water like a lifestream, cold
and mean
with wrinkling skin and yellowing teeth
missing all the meaning, and so on.
But no matter, she says.
No matter those poisoned guts, no matter
the heartache. No matter.
Kelli Charland (she/her) attends SUNY Plattsburgh for English literature and creative writing. She has worked as the copy editor for North Star, SUNY Plattsburgh’s student-run literary magazine, and as an editorial assistant and social media manager for Saranac Review. One of her essays appears on Saranac Review’s blog. She was awarded 1st place for the Robert Frost Memorial Poetry Prize in May 2024 for her poem, “A letter to my amygdala.”