The water rising, we stay at the bar

by Carolee Bennett

quinguyen/Unsplash

to see how high it may get, a detail we won’t know until we know. Most rivers burst their banks at some point. And while we’re being honest, let’s agree we have no choice but to trust a body that can’t be trusted. No one gets out alive. And yet surprise. How something on a scan grows. Why a cough lingers. Pound your fists all you want, but don’t pretend you can carry on forever. Every picture of the pelvic bone a Rorschach test. Don’t let your answer be symmetrical. Allow laughter and be direct: grief is unsustainable and boring. In the x-ray of the chest, tell them you see long white fingers wrapped around a flower stem. Hang on tight and raise the blossom of a smile on your face up to the dark sky. We’re all something less than rain and wind, something more than soil. For now. Let’s close our tab while the bridges are still open. Soon, the bartender will send everyone home, even the most devout, and the cook will turn off the fryer, our wings the last to come out.

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Carolee Bennett is a writer and artist living in Upstate New York, where—after a local poetry competition—she has fun saying she’s been the “almost” poet laureate of Smitty’s Tavern. Her work has received recognition from Sundress (Best of the Net 2018), the Crab Creek Review Poetry Prize (semi-finalist) and the Tupelo Quarterly Poetry Prize (finalist). She has an MFA in poetry from Ashland University and works full-time as a writer in social media marketing.