This is not an Elegy by Catherine Pierce

At sixteen, I was illegal and brilliant,
my fingernails chewed to half-moons.
I took off my clothes in a late March
field. I had secret car wrecks,
secret hysteria. I opened my mouth
to swallow stars.


In backseats
I learned the alchemy of guilt, lust,
and distance. I was unformed and total.
I swore like a sailor. But slowly the cops
stopped coming around. The heat lifted
its palms. The radio lost some teeth.


Now I see the landscape behind me
as through a Claude glass—
tinted deeper, framed just so, bits
of gilt edging the best parts.
I see my unlined face, a thousand
film stars behind the eyes.


I was every murderess, 
every whip-thin alcoholic, 
every heroine with the silver tongue. 


Always young
Paul Newman’s best girl. 
Alwaysa lightning sky behind each kiss.
Some days I watch myself
in the third person, speak to her
in the second. 


I say:
I will meet you in sleep.
I will know you
by your stillness and your shaking.
By your second-hand gown.
By your bruises left by mouths
since forgotten. 


This is not
an elegy because I cannot bear
for it to be. It is only a tree branch
against the window. 


It is only a cherry tomato 
slowly reddening in the garden.
I will put it in my mouth. It will
be sweet, and you will swallow.


via Poetry 365