My Heart Drinks Gin with Me
I look over and there she is,
outside of my chest tonguing salt
because she likes the burn. A part
of me possesses a bottomless
wish to abandon her, grab
my long coat and walk away
without words. But, my heart,
she is wounded and afraid.
Yesterday, when I drew close,
she struck me, a closed fist
through the teeth and said
There, there, now it’s over;
you can let go. But, she did not
close, did not stop her rhythmic
chattering. She atones
like the devil: It’s not over unless
you want it to be. Hell-y I call her—
as not to confuse her with myself.
I practice existing without her —
but in this, I am dead and she is
blubbering blood on the floor
like a fool. I cannot do it, cannot
desert her to her own unbroken
grief, her bizarre idiosyncrasies.
She does not understand reality.
I imagine ending it all, wringing
the life-juice out of her,
entombing her wild corpse
like a secret, deep into my body—
a place where no one will find her.
Hollie Dugas lives in New Mexico. Her work has been included in Barrow Street, Reed Magazine, Qu, Redivider, Porter House Review, Salamander, Poet Lore, Mud Season Review, The Louisville Review, The Penn Review, Breakwater Review, Sixth Finch, Gordon Square Review, Phoebe, Broad River Review, and Louisiana Literature. Additionally, “A Woman’s Confession #5,162” was selected as the winner of Western Humanities Review Mountain West Writers’ Contest (2017). Hollie has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and for inclusion in Best New Poets. Most recently, her poem was selected as winner of the 22nd Annual Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize at CALYX, in addition to, the 2022 Heartwood Poetry Prize. She was also a finalist in the Atlanta Review’s 2022 International Poetry Contest.