“You should have stayed.” - Michael Baruch
Have you ever felt nostalgia for the future?
A clumsy buzz in your heart
for what you think is coming.
Like walking backwards, your heels scraping
the asphalt in anticipation.
Sometimes, you will stop and stare
back. Just look at the beginning:
age six, your thick thumbs like dull guillotines,
prying the head off your sister’s Barbie - what
she must have done to deserve it. What it must
have been like to hold the headless thing
in your hands. Do you remember the first time
you called her Bitch? The word scratchy
in your throat. It was April, you were nine.
It had been boiling in your stomach for weeks.
Let this be a reminder for all
that has happened: we have been together,
we are apart, time has passed, time, too,
shall pass you on, gripping your body
even when you fight back.
When you’ve grown too slow, floating
in the present, it will be there
to push you up the steps. There:
the door to your childhood home.
You’ll knock for too long, and maybe
you’ll slide down to sit against it,
falling from the doorstep of this very moment,
clunking back down each stair: I am, I am, I am.
Have you ever felt nostalgia for the future?
A clumsy buzz in your heart
for what you think is coming.
Like walking backwards, your heels scraping
the asphalt in anticipation.
Sometimes, you will stop and stare
back. Just look at the beginning:
age six, your thick thumbs like dull guillotines,
prying the head off your sister’s Barbie - what
she must have done to deserve it. What it must
have been like to hold the headless thing
in your hands. Do you remember the first time
you called her Bitch? The word scratchy
in your throat. It was April, you were nine.
It had been boiling in your stomach for weeks.
Let this be a reminder for all
that has happened: we have been together,
we are apart, time has passed, time, too,
shall pass you on, gripping your body
even when you fight back.
When you’ve grown too slow, floating
in the present, it will be there
to push you up the steps. There:
the door to your childhood home.
You’ll knock for too long, and maybe
you’ll slide down to sit against it,
falling from the doorstep of this very moment,
clunking back down each stair: I am, I am, I am.
