By Jessica Powers

I always thought that blue was a sad color, but it looks so good on your eyes. I poured myself in that ocean like a fresh pale of water or gravy at the dinner table. But the ocean was dying, because we killed it. The water evaporated into those things we call clouds that live in the sky. And we drank every molecule without a thought for any other being. And we ate all the meat, but did we harvest enough gravy? Like we were wholesome beings who lived only from the Earth. I escaped the world at the dinner table. And as I drank my cool cup of ocean I looked into the sockets that house your eyes. Maybe that is why I love you so, with eyes that remind me of the first source of life. But my flesh will never feel that splash of the salty solution again. For you, and the ocean are dying. 

Jessica Powers is a Chicago-based poet and writer. Her work has appeared in Hair Trigger and Ransack Press. She is currently buying too many books and looking forward to writing on the train again someday. Find her on Twitter and Instagram.

By Jessica Powers

there was once a Christmas Eve which I spent in the hospital:  
a swollen throat and a body so hot the snow turned to puddles around me.

and you were there with a bag full of presents–the skinniest Santa Claus  
I had ever seen. I remember there being palettes of eyeshadow, all 

named things to match the season. I remember your toothy smile, as I 
made incisions in red and green paper with my pubescent fingers. 

when you were my age, you said, your throat did not care for you either  
and now it is this way again–your body parts always becoming one

another. I wondered if I was anything like you, and perhaps it was our  
throats which connected us, the esophagus being the pathway to the heart. 

Jessica Powers is a Chicago-based poet and writer. Her work has appeared in Hair Trigger and Ransack Press. She is currently buying too many books and looking forward to writing on the train again someday. Find her on Twitter and Instagram.