Autoapparitions

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Natasha Lopez

 

I visit myself sometimes

in the basketball court where she used to hide

behind a row of pine trees with her neighbor,

pushing through needles.

She would come home sticky.

Mom would bathe her in rubbing alcohol and chocolate milk

to calm the sting and the pain in her legs

and because she thought she liked chocolate milk.

Or crying in the bathroom,

while the ESL teacher brushes his teeth,

scratching at the marks behind her knees

that get red and purple and spread to her thighs.

Google said to rub oil on stretched skin to ease the itch

and fade the scars.

She was too young the first time she wanted to die.

The road there is foggy because she blacked out

and a Stranger grabbed the wheel–

she can hardly remember.

Her friends pass her a joint, helps keep the flashbacks down.

In a coffee field the beans whispered about love and distance.

She laid with them in the sun,

watched them brown to pass the time, find peace in the end.

Under a tree with no leaves in San Roque, she is rich.

She doesn’t like when I visit, says I

make her chest heavy and the air thin.

So I stop visiting, but

never stop thinking about her.

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Natasha Lopez graduated in 2021, double majoring in Journalism & Media Studies and Latin American Studies. She is from Union City, NJ. You can read more of her poetry and writing at www.egostudy.com.

Natasha wrote this poem for Joanna Fuhrman’s Poetry course during the spring of 2021. Fuhrman selected the piece for inclusion in WHR.