soft & aching, tired & haunted
By Logan Anthony
strings of lost teeth. jars of forest-floor jawbones,
dirt-caked vertebrae, split-apart skulls.
i’d rather they decompose on my shelf with witness.
i know what you’re thinking, morbid isn’t it?
how those remnants of life, confined to this room,
make me feel less alone, accompanied even,
in my own rotting. these aching teeth & soft hands.
the fungus creeping beneath the door.
but haven’t i confined myself, too?
i don’t know how to stop building obstacles
i’ll never overcome. if the foundation’s bad
to begin with, you move on, but you can’t escape
your body. here, sleep only comes beneath the bed,
where the dust presses into the folds of my skin
& i’m not cocooned in the sheets you
never came back for. i can’t bear to name
this bed mine, not still smelling like you.
after, i ran the washer for a week straight.
i spent all the grocery money on detergent
& didn’t move from the bathroom floor
until i believed you weren’t coming back.
until i couldn’t shake the lavender from my head.
i can’t erase you, but if i fill this room
maybe there won’t be enough space for
your ghost. i’ll walk the woods for days at a time.
comfort myself with pockets of bone, new soil stains
rubbed into my clothes, these raw & aching hands,
the limp bite of these soft teeth. someday i’ll run out
of deer paths to follow, of spaces to hide.
i’ll emerge from beneath the bed, rip away
the sheets, & collapse on the bare mattress.
i won’t curl into anything but myself, unable to rid
of the ones i’ve been trying to replace,
these tired & haunted bones,
right here, these,
my own.
you, without name
then, in the air, i could taste the leaves
coming apart beneath our footsteps,
too much space aching between.
we moved fast enough to leave
the plants hungry. the echo
of footsteps crashing to earth.
i was a shadow trailing behind you
a role i’d assumed over time.
by then i’d been swallowed
by enough meadows
to keep my words wound inside.
after the last rain, i didn’t speak
for days—not until you noticed.
misunderstanding darkened
the green of your eyes.
you wouldn’t touch me before
we shrunk, surrounded by trees.
never said why.
when the glass collapsed to shards
and time itself forgot which way to run,
when i drove so fast you prayed
right there, in the passenger seat of my car,
to a god you never believed in.
it was disaster, i learned: the only time
you’d come alive.
which came first: desire or need?
your hand
clenched to fist,
shaking, bloodless.
i never knew
i never knew
what you felt,
no,
not without pleading.
Logan Anthony is an American queer writer and transgender artist from Indiana. Anthony holds a B.A. in Creative Writing & English and works as a curriculum developer. Find Logan’s work in Thin Air Magazine, Hive Avenue Literary Journal, Papers Publishing Literary Magazine, Hare’s Paw Literary Journal, The Write Launch, The Ulu Review, and more.