I Really Wish You’d Stop Dying
I said aloud to a plant in my own voice, trying
for a moment to pause. The other voice
inside, one who knows better than—
the plant hung so close to my head
I could, without erring or blushing,
say we sleep together—
denial? I’m not denying anything,
not even the stim of a selfish note
pressing into the stems of this
purple and green affair
bypassing saturation. Meaning
if I were to paint a flowering abyss
you could fall into like a video game
leap, by mistake—a mistake that
could be happy if it’s years ago
and the game rewarded you for the error
of being less than perfectly able to stay
alive at all times, there being more
room for you below—and the mistake
really could have been an escape,
as well, some parts of the mind make,
slipping from the grip of the demand
to continue, I would paint it
in green flowers and purple leaves
with so many shades of each
receding into shadows
and emerging into patches, all I could do
would be to fall, farther and farther
into and out of love—not back
and forth so much as farther down—
the way a fractal will unfold
more edges of itself, more earthly
and unseemly blossoming.
I hope for this: I mix for it
a spoon of powdered sea into a pitcher
with a cold and narrow neck
and spout the blurt of love straight
into the air escape, the earth escape,
the water escape, with the fire
waiting with its simmering hunger
and unquenchable desire to take
the rest of the dying home.
Why Am I Pulling So Many Dead Leaves Off This Hanging Inchplant
- They’re fun to hunt and find, found by sound in the interior when the rubbing is kindling-dry.
- Doing so may help the health of what remains.
- I have time on my hands—in my hands, since elsewhere it’s rarely even reachable.
- Both of my parents are alive, for the lengthening moment a day at a time, more precariously than they have ever been. My mom struggling three years now with catatonia—was the diagnosis, not that anyone understands, least of all her, how that could be right. My dad two decades down the road of three cancers, celf-destructions collected like cards from an unlucky hand.
- That death is part of life doesn’t mean you have to leave the skeletons in your room.
- A doctor, shrugging, this many years into the fold, he might just live.
- just—because
- I like the feel of them pressed together, a tight and tighter bind of but now that we’re here…
- The sparser vine has a look to it, past gaunt, still growing in places, still flowering in debris of miniature purple trefoils, one after the other like maybe one of these tries will take.
Christopher Phelps lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he teaches himself and others math and related mysteries. He is queer and neuroqueer, autistic and aphantasiac, twainbows that underwrite his attempts at creative solvency and steadfascination. His poems have appeared in journals including Beloit Poetry Journal, The Kenyon Review, The Nation, Poetry, and RHINO. A chapbook, Tremblem, exists as a secret item. Find him at www.christopher-phelps.com.