dual absense
with thanks to Andrew and Harb
for setting me straight
some nights she comes to me an xl
t-shirt draped over her like a freudian slip
and says i’m sorry for hurting you
if i could i’d do it all over again
and i wake to find something missing
from the sky like looking past the final
row of beach houses into that uneasy nothingness
of air above the ocean
gone is the salt-sweet sea-grape tangle
of her unwashed hair its absence
swarms me like flies swarm a sun-rotted
jellyfish like your hands swarm
my forehead strangle my arteries
fill my throat with sand
so i can no longer taste
the sea-salt savory juice how it trailed
down my chin like edamame water lingered
on my breath like prayer and dripped
onto my shirt and i was in no hurry
to rub it out
other nights i wreck up against the bed
and we’re back in the time when she is seeing you
on the side indulging in you a meal
of spineless shrimp and suddenly i’m the side
a seaweed salad something to be picked at
and then she is calling out to me come back please
come back like i’ve sunk
to the bottom of a deep deep cave
and i wake
mangled in coquina the tides long gone out
the soft forgiveness of her body now a memory
i can barely remember remembering
and somewhere she laughs like a gull
while here i carry the lack of her everywhere
a plastic bag that swells with emptiness
that even the atlantic would take a million
years to disintegrate that you could tear
in half
in half
in half
in half
J. Aelick is a birdwatcher, disc golfer, tarot reader, and sometimes even poet. Their work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in The Journal, sinking city, Okay Donkey, Common Ground Review, the Blowing Rock Art and History Museum, and elsewhere. In 2023, they were a fellow of the German Literature in Berlin seminar. They are an MFA candidate at North Carolina State University.
