Emily Light
Emily Light’s poetry can be found in such journals as Inch, Lake Effect, Projected Letters, Into the Void, and others. She teaches English and lives in Boonton with her husband and son.
On the Eating Disorder Ward
What should I believe of my world?
My sister was chubby then she wasn’t.
She gave me a box she made with puzzle pieces on the lid.
None fit together under their shellac of glitter glue.
She described what happened in the bathroom,
how nothing was enough,
how the inpatient eating disorder ward was a type of AA
with its groups, circles, and pulling at eyelids.
She gave me the empty box the way they tell you to
extend a hand for amends, but she was
practicing for her future of forgiving herself,
forgiveness like staring out a window she’ll never break.
Blueberry Fields
We lost our brother in the blueberry fields
down in Hammonton; now he sleeps
where the blueberry flowers fell from the fruit,
lips wrinkled to spit. He & the Jersey devil
trade stories over discarded blueberry pint shot glasses,
cross together into cornfields
& spin nooses from the overripe silks.
Every Jesus fish I see asks
if he will one day find a way home
if one last rainstorm will wash
the thin blue skins away from his bone-
white teeth & he’ll come smiling
out of the flesh.
I Have Heard It Pass
On the swing, my son watched an airplane disappear—
a rose-gold reflection turned invisible in the clouds.
My brain wants to put scary things into my dreams,
he told me. He didn't look afraid, yet
his voice has splintered the house with night terrors.
It's getting dark, I reminded him, but he pointed out
the lukewarm streetlights, he kept swinging without kicking,
my hands cold on the small of his back. As twilight neared,
he leapt from one sidewalk square to another, avoiding the cracks.
My worry blossomed into an umbrella, and from that umbrella
hung all the mental illnesses I could pass down to him.
What happens if you touch the cracks? He said, Nothing.
I held out my hand and he stuffed my fingers into his mouth
as though he could suckle on the gesture, could pass calm up to me.
1993
after Adam Zagajewski
Could I return to 1993, to the brick schoolhouse
& the varnished gymnasium,
to give you a boost on the pull-up bar,
to gather woodchips beneath the swings
to better cushion your fall.
This is when memories magnetized,
this is the year of double digits & rusted chains.
I would hand you a list of warnings & a birch branch
to chew while you read. Your mother just told you
they taste like root beer. Try to believe her.
This is the year when you hide your truths.
Tell your mother who you are, make a gallery
of who you are. You will lose nine people,
including yourself, before the turn of the century,
but right now you are 10 years old & beautiful.
You are not a collection of sticky notes,
scribblings of shame.
It is not your little brother who is dead yet.
The horrible thing has not made a mockery
of your sex yet. Tell your mother
you will be a different woman than she is one day
but a woman all the same,
a woman with a road’s yellow line between her feet.
Tell her you’re already broken,
just not in the same way she is.