Two Poems – Writers House Review

Tori Greiner

the pain, of a bad brain

when I look into the garbage retainer

I called a brain

I have found nothing but grocery lists

rotten apple cores stained

with black ink

and wild fire ants

circling the light cutting through

the shadow of the tree

when I wake up in the middle of the night

to sleeptalk a customer’s total

my boyfriend will think it’s funny

but I just know

there is a piece of me gone

that I will never be able

to call back

(I have forgotten so much

the fire ants remember so little

but blinding light

eating away at shadow)

halfway to the shore

looking for my purse

I had forgotten that too

(my brain running circles

sunlight melting eyes

I remember so little)

throwing groceries down in anger

Rachel reassures me we can stop home

she will drive me back

I am staring out the window

trying not to project myself onto the road

I am staring out the window

following a deceased deer

laid in parkway graveside

ran into headlights

birthed and saved under needled branch

what else can she remember

besides that final blinding light

doing the wrong thing

way back in time there is a barbie box playset

it’s your room and there’s us

stuck in old feelings after the first show

i had seen you play in that new band

standing too close in the basement next to the boiler

it was dangerous but i heard one time

that to be friends after heartbreak requires

you to keep loving and yeah,

i just might

i laid in your bed while you peed before driving me home

with my head on your pillow i stared at the wall

seeing me as you walked back in

you silently sat next to me and patted me gently

and it felt like a soul embrace

(i’ll keep it in mine if you keep it in yours)

now sitting in my driveway

it was 50b Morrell Street and you’d never see it again (that way)

avoiding eye contact in the used car your dad had bought you

that i had heard about but only seen once

the night we had ended things

it was going to be purgatory forever,

just didn’t want each other enough,

and i had asked if you knew what i meant

and you looked at me and spoke

“yeah, i feel it right now.”

Tori Greiner is an English major with a creative writing minor here at Rutgers. She is a senior and will be graduating in January of 2023. She writes, “I am so grateful for all that I have learned at Rutgers through the wonderful English program–and I can’t wait until graduation!”