Fortune-Telling

By Hannah Carpino

You will escape 
To where the end is visible and 
Splaying itself apart for you. 
You will know this destination 
By the sound first, a congregation 
Of buzzing. You will look for the hive 
And find nothing. After some time, 
You will learn to hear nothing. 
And you will bask in the sunlight there 
Like a cold-blooded thing. 
You will come to love this ritual, 
A variation on calcium, 
Multivitamin supplements, 
The promise of aging gracefully, 
The years just melting off your face–  
Ice-cream longing. Crow’s feet. 
You will find that our paths  
Are diverging here, 
Whether you like it or not. 

You will live a grand unraveling 
Of your own design. 
You will shed your clumsy verbiage 
In apologies until your teeth hurt, 
And then in vows until you are only 
Petal pink gums. You will 
Move backwards in ecstasy 
To chubby fingers and knees, 
The notes are flying off the clipboard, 
There is no pane of glass, there is no 
Neutral and dispassionate observation 
On animal behavior, 
There is no pane of glass. 
You will not need your sharpness 
Any longer. You will not bake 
Another birthday cake to compensate 
For every time you let the joke 
Land razor-side down.  

You will shrink to adjust, or rather 
You will compress. You will be denser, 
Pocket-sized, leaden,  
Die-cast into some immovable 
Expression of wonder. 
And you will content yourself 
With the medicine you have been prescribed: 
A pristine arrangement of 
Dollhouse rooms and furniture, 
And the feeling that everyone  
Is speaking urgent and beautiful things 
In a room just far away enough 
That you won’t understand  
What they are saying.

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Hannah Carpino is a poet and short story writer living in Burlington, Vermont. Her work has previously been published in Rust and Moth, White Wall Review, Hobart Mag, and Empty House Press.