Better Sky

I go home tomorrow.

It would be best to forget
.     this city and all I have seen:
twin headed snakes, ghosts of mules,
shimmering with insomnia asking

“Are we there yet?”

Without him, there’s nothing left for me and

I am almost done with this diary now—

I suppose a diary is all that it will ever be.
That’s fine.

When I get out of here it might be time to start thinking about a new sort of life.

Perhaps I’ve learned enough to begin one although I am not sure what
it is I have learned.

What have I learned? What have I learned
in this school of the dead?
And where to begin?

Let me begin

not at the beginning, not even at the awake. But rather at the I will never again

possess that belief of children that
nothing terrible will ever happen to me.

I will never again feel under my skin that endless aquifer of birds delighted and oblivious—

I’m never going to risk
lifting the veil I keep
.     between myself and the world.
From now on it can only be:

“What have I done?”

“What myths will the land write for itself—”

like every living creature that ventures
so far from home—

If there is anything I can leave you with it’s that there is water down here,

running under us,
that children wade into and emerge from

not as children.

***

If the Dead Were in the Room I Would Say

***

Jill Mceldowney is the author of the chapbook Airs Above Ground (Finishing Line Press) as well as Kisses Over Babylon (dancing girl press). She is a co founder and editor for Madhouse Press. She is also a recent National Poetry Series Finalist. Her previously published work can be found in journals such as Muzzle, Fugue, Prairie Schooner, Vinyl, and other notable publications.