Rummy Park, 34
(Schrödinger’s Cat)

by Rebecca Lu Kiernan

If we were still in love
With green sea foam,
Sugar white sands,
We might get on a boat
And nothing could stop us,
Not the borders of dark continents
Or the crossed arms of angels,
Not the we of us,
The me of you
Still in love
In a boat of honeysuckle,
Gingerbread, shell shaped macaroni
Spray painted gold.

But the way you walk through me
And stop
As if you could feel me now
Through the soup of space and time,
Through unshakable silence,
The brick wall of denial,
Luminous in the memory
Of my unblinking affection,
I think, my darling dear,
We could go to sleep in this bare white room
And wake to cobalt starlings
Dancing heavily, so heavily,
Breathing shallow and tentative,
Singing in strange new tones
In our platinum house on the moon,
And we could laugh about this old world
That blew up in our faces
When Schrödinger’s cat was still in play
And all possibilities ran wild somewhere
And in some parallel universe
Every sunset swept you into my hands.