By Amanda Auchter
Tomorrow I will die
if I eat this pear. If I eat
this perfect almond, this
apricot. A whole bowl
of fear at my fingertips—
lips numbed, breath
out of breath. Once,
I boarded an airplane
and began my ascent
of panic. I begged
my husband to ask the flight
attendant to ask the pilot
to turn the plane around
because what if I had a heart
attack in midair, what if
I died?
I fell asleep on his shoulder,
still in fear, still in the wild air
that rushes over me without
warning. Here’s another:
if I leave
my house, the world
will explode into a hail
of bullets in the supermarket,
the drugstore. The news confirms
this daily. I have a favorite mug,
but I can’t use it. The last time
I drank tea, smiled at the smiling
painted sun, twenty children
died in their classroom.
I open my front door
and the sun warns me:
what will not happen
will happen, is happening right now.
Amanda Auchter is the author of The Wishing Tomb, winner of the PEN Center USA Literary Award for Poetry and the Perugia Press Book Award, and The Glass Crib, winner of the Zone 3 Press First Book Award for Poetry. Her writing appears in publications such as Alaska Quarterly Review, HuffPost, CNN, Black Warrior Review, and the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day project, among others. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Bennington College and is a contributing reviewer for Rhino and Indianapolis Review. She lives in Houston, Texas.