by Matthew Gilbert
I use the word ‘tantalizing’ because I know
what it means now,
drinking sangria all day
until it’s again day and piecing together
the hours, my memories capture the emotion
of dawn but not
its detail, like tinted
film in old movies where they needed night.
Some guy juggled fire in our kitchen—
I remember, a match
lighting in my skull—
and it painted us into shadows, immune
to everything except the sun coming up,
and we threw open
the windows to scream
things we couldn’t during the day, like,
Fucking you feels like jumping in a taxi and yelling
‘Follow that taxi!’
That after we walked
through the street’s soft peach evening light
looking at all the beautiful yards for flowers
we wanted to come back
and steal at night.
It feels so long since everything caught sun
like it wasn’t trying to run, and day-drunk
we jumped off
the couch to yell
answers at game shows when asked
what we would give for this life, and for
the one that comes
after, ugly crying
over a jet ski because once you have been
in love, the rest of your life is accepting
you don’t get to feel it
all the time, always.
My Sunday school teacher was right when
she explained that Hell is pitch darkness
where fire constantly
burns the flesh, but
never consumes it. And it lasts longer
than it would take a bird to carry all the sand
on Earth
to the moon
one grain at a time. After a million trips
the suffering won’t be even a fraction
of the way done—
so yes,
I know now how it feels to be so close.
Matthew Gilbert’s work has appeared in or is forthcoming from PANK, Sugar House Review, Powder Keg, Columbia Poetry Review, and elsewhere. They live in Connecticut and measure the general success of life by the ratio of trees to people wherever they happen to be.