M A S H

By Kush Thompson

I have imagined our children. Forgive me.
—Sierra DeMulder, “Love, Forgive Me”

You will tell your babies, someday,
of the little house behind the wall clock.

They will love most the part about the window
sloped inside a six’s hollow, silhouettes

of Sundays, shadows having dinner.
How they walk along the edges of  hands

at night, skipping pebbles made of minutes.
Your ex-girlfriend lives in the same time zone,

but you will call her too many years ago.
The more the story gets retold, the more goes

missing. A mother to only the imaginary.
Together, you named a baby after what didn’t happen

and there is no limbo for that. Instead,
you will love on opposite ends of a compass

to quiet the lacuna between your two suns.
Sometimes, the swinging needle could almost be

a hand, but you know better than to reach for it.
When you talk about the little house, you lie

and say you miss it. You remember snow
where there wasn’t any. A dog asleep in the yard,

dripping springtime and nostalgic forgetting.
Sometimes, in the middle of the night,

you will watch yourself walk out of a hole inside
a clock, and it will be like you never left.

Notes:

Audio poem performed by the author.

Source: Poetry (May 2024)