turn out the lights

Elisa Subin

unplug the stars, 
what remains 

a length of floss by the bathroom sink, yesterday’s good night kiss, a post it note of absolution, a last night never happened, it wasn’t what you think, we simply fell asleep, a lie, but so many things are, I tripped and fell over a gravestone, I was looking behind and forgot what was in front, death is in front, always in front, like an air freshener dangling from a car’s rearview mirror, mom forgot her shopping list on the kitchen table, her final words scrawled on a scrap of paper, what she had planned to make for dinner that night, did she know it would be her last list or was it nothing special to her, just a tally of endless possibilities waiting under fluorescent lights in the supermarket aisle, what if her last words were half pound of bologna, please? when I was a kid, I thought people died in their sleep and were reborn in the morning just in time for breakfast, each morning born again, funny, but not so funny when you think about it, or the alternative, I tend to get anxious in the late afternoon, try to focus on the small things, a homework assignment, a half-eaten protein bar, a cluster of grapes, the little light in the fridge, but a stroll around the block and anxiety pulls me toward the traffic, I walk faster, managing to avoid the urge, but maybe this time it will be different or more likely tomorrow I will be reborn wake up get dressed eat that breakfast go to class eat lunch go home read a book water the plants eat dinner watch tv brush teeth, and don’t forget to floss, staccato days, and the nights, well, they never stretched far from home, and darkness was there bored and hungry and always ready to swallow me whole

Elisa Subin is a writer whose work has appeared in The Account: A Journal of Poetry, Prose, and Thought, The Inflectionist Review, Not One of Us, 34 Orchard Literary Journal, and many others. Her chapbook, Departures, was published by Bottlecap Press. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.