Three Poems
Courtney Woods
All the things we used to do
We used to sit at the foot of that grand king bed, miles and miles from all the pillows.
We used to bow our heads in reverence for nightly prayers.
We used to squeeze our eyes shut so tight bursts of light shined through,
backs straight as a board and hands crushed together, struggling to sit still.
We used to crack one eye open and choke back our laughter.
We used to play ball in the house, our shocked smiles mirrored back at us
in cracked vase reflections.
Do you remember when you left the laptop on the floor and how I did a cartwheel
and cracked the screen? Do you remember when I hung my head low
and offered up my Christmas gifts as penance?
We used to tell that story every Christmas.
We used to fight every year because you ate my name off my birthday cake,
maybe it was because we’re Irish twins.
We used to spend hours cycling through movies and roughhousing
on the way to Memphis. Our eyes glued to that tiny screen. That’s where I learned
what I wanted to do with my life.
We used to trek up mountainous grass hills and roll down.
Green stems humming in the wind,
blade to blade whispering their own sibling song.
We used to tiptoe downstairs at night. In the pitch black warmth of summer, barefoot,
trading secrets under fridge lights while our house croaked and shifted in the breeze.
Then, a black hole beside me, warbled with your absence. All of a sudden I could understand
the lonely lullaby of a whale call.
I never knew we were so bad at picking up the phone. Do you remember
when we dropped Nik off at college? We were sat in the Pizza Hut parking lot.
The aircon rattled in our silver sedan while tears streamed down my face.
She transferred home the next year. When you left, I tried so hard not to cry.
After we all opened our eyes to say goodbye,
I couldn’t help it.
I’m sorry.
The sky cracked with lightning and we had to wait out the rain for another hour,
I was thankful. Now, when I come home you wait at the door.
Saving a seat for me beside you.
At our kitchen table, like always.
The Birthday Blues
Dilapidated streamers hang like abandoned wind chimes from my balcony.
The cake, half eaten,
Trapped in its plastic prison, sits idly on the table.
Mocking me with its confetti frosting, waiting for someone
who wants to eat it.
I would never have a birthday party again.
I stare out at the tent in my backyard
Wind blows through its polyester walls like it shouldn’t have ever been able
to stand upright in the first place.
I touch my face, haunted by phantom tears dried hours ago. Afraid that if
I look in a mirror,
I’ll see it written all over my face.
Penned in that same deep blue ink on all the birthday cards,
But in my own crude handwriting.
Baby.
Scribbled over every inch of my face and dripping from my forehead.
Next year I would be double digits.
That should have excited me but
Now
Here
Sitting at my dining table looking at these plastic toys,
Their hard bodies, shells.
Hollowed out on the inside.
I am younger than I’ve ever been,
Strapped into a high chair I have outgrown, welded to the floor
of my childhood kitchen.
My birthday was really tomorrow, but that didn’t matter anymore.
I wished I hadn’t invited that one person.
I tried not to think about it and just be thankful.
Everyone packed back into their booster seats by their parents,
Like shepherds herding tiny knocked kneed sheep.
My dad was sitting on the couch watching TV and nodding off like always
I went over and lifted his arm and tucked myself into his chest.
This is for Mom
I imagine my mom running through a tall sea of grass,
each blade kissing her cheeks with I love you’s.
I imagine her lifting her tiny hand up to the blue sky in the heat
of those Mississippi Summers.
I see her standing and watching her Grandad come up and over that hill.
The slow clop of hooves nicking against stocks of grain.
I see her sitting between her sister’s legs, struggling to be still.
I see my Aunt Diana giving up on her hair, and then, my Mom
determinedly doing it herself.
Her hands now, a calloused terrain, each bump a story,
each scar a reminder.
I imagine her waking before sunrise and getting dressed. Her tiny eyes
weary from sleep.
She walks to the bus stop, and the moon is still out.
The sky, hazy with orange clouds, as she talks to her sisters.
Her laugh echoes across the fields, no one around to hear it but them.
Decades later, that laugh becomes my own.
She boards the bus headed to the back,
crowded by people clamoring for a conversation.
I used to run my hands across her high school yearbook.
My fingers catching on every ridge. Her smile framed in black and white,
if you turn the page her teeth will glint and twinkle like the sun.
I think of her in that hospital gown, as my brother jumped on the bed.
Her stomach graced with a scar, stitched and opened three times over.
That line. A door sealing a galaxy that goes back and back.
My sister waits at her side and my brother’s breath christens my face.
He sits much too close, craving my spot in her arms.
I imagine her heart beat, mine stuttering to meet hers.
I imagine the sleepless days and nightless nights.
She always talks about cradling us, missing us as babies.
She looks at me, eyes so big and brown and soulful.
Deep and rich with a life unknowable to me.
When she would drive me home from school,
I used to stare at the back of that gray headrest,
trying to commit her face to memory. Painting it over and over.
She’s so pretty.
I would stay up at night sitting vigil, reading books while light streamed
under door cracks, afraid I’d miss something terrible.
She’ll never know how much I love her.
Courtney Woods is a junior and a cinema studies major in SAS.