Sarah Fonseca

Fate fires the shots,

Foretelling BBs proceeded

By pellets until that inevitable,

smoking shotgun shell lies

Between two pairs of feet

You slap the bandage of optimism

Onto the bullet wound

—I’ll be okay, we’ll be okay—

then gracelessly tear it off

to suck out the infection

in a public setting

Today,
I was thinking about you,
Here.
Offering you a yellow envelope
for the
sticky love
sticky notes
that you’ll find on
the backs of mirrors
and cooler sides of pillows

You’ll depart,
not saddened,
but sickened
by sweetness
as well as the sea
of my blue handwriting

We clutch our future’s map
in soft hands,
and scowl at days that stand between us
like archaic rope bridges
we’ve yet to cross.

Stop.
Please?
Just stop.
Feel the sway,
forget the next sunrise
and watch this sun set
over the bridges
we’ve already dashed across.

Last night,
I dreamed of sleep.
I dreamed of kissing.
I dreamed of kissing you
before I fell asleep.
The only pillow I’ve ever truly needed
is your chest,
the only wake-up call,
your heart.

I agonize over the
18…
17…
16…
like an astronaut preparing for lift-off,
that burning jet fuel feeling
launching my body towards yours
the number of days
I’ve known you,
feel too brief
-“there’s so much more to her,
I want it all”-
and so infinite
-“She spoke of soulmates,
I scared her off
but…
I think I get it now”-

darling
i finally have a grasp
on the enormity of
the universe

you
are so near, lying
on the very same
Eastern Time Zone
throw rug, drawing
relentless mental maps
of where we’re traveling
in the corners of
your mouth

i
am simply connecting
the dots between our heart-
lands

I just thought about You and
that goddamned, secondhand
Bubblicious blue boat;
how it always stalled, those
rusted propellers dinging
against the sandstone floor,
baptizing the rocks, scraping
away their algae sins

you were once Her salvation,
with your faint ‘sell by’ date,
that milk fell sour quickly
while the honey turned to stone

We were afloat between the
Peach and Palmetto States,
No one had bothered to list
the others on the map,
like the states of Poor,
Pissed off, and Petrified

The glassy surface was
too deep to dive into,
too corrupt to walk across
too shallow to reignite
the Johnson engine or
the flame between you two—
(the lighter fluid of those
beaten-to-death,
Bible verses
and raised voices
sufficed)

You broke out the oars and
rowed madly while We
inspected the crinkling brow,
felt you detonate into that
furious Cuban child who once
rowed his way across the Gulf

I just thought about You and
that goddamned, secondhand
Bubblicious blue boat;
Tell me, why did You ever
let your oceans become lakes?

When sweat feels like a second skin;
like the Mediterranean Sea above a floor
of peachfuzz coral reefs,
cellulite fault lines,
riptide curves
and the incidental,
unsolicited,
fishing net.

New Year’s Eve
is the shit of a thousand bulls
and bears
who wear 
glittering, descending
disco balls
and sip 
the sanguine champagne 
of commerce.

Her name was Connie.
She rushed forward
with charm bracelets jingling—
a brave, sweet little girl.     

I took a special interest in
her mouth,
her laugh,
that slippery, friendly smile

Rolling her eyes,
she sang along
Dreaming and dazed
Hearing music in her head

Tugging and struggling,
her heart was
just a pounding, living thing,
slowing down like gelatin hardening

Faded and ghostly,
she can’t hear the music
at this distance
Her name was Connie.

I am entering the stage
loaded with butt kicks: 
That eccentric flexibility of
not regretting,
yet wondering why I stayed,
halfheartedly, in
such futile soils.

Muscle lengthens by the inch
until I become fine
with past attempts at defying myself
— then, concentric!
I am the one soul above
and two soles below
these wandering legs.

You stand on the second-highest ledge of your life,
slender horsehair bow drawn,
a weapon against undisclosed demons,
poised and submissively waiting
for the conductor’s baton to dictate
accents, crescendos, and
the speed at which blood courses through your translucent body.

I vainly anticipate the music as well,
the demure sounds of a violin solo
that will never make instrument
of my own optimistic ears and empathetic heart.
I am too many hours away in distance and time,
eyes adhered to a pixelated photo of you,
a beautiful regazzo whom I never met

“Et tu, Brute?” your ancestor cried before his demise.
But Caesar erected bridges across the Rhine,
and you’ve leapt over the steel railings,
perishing for your country just as he,
for both hero and antihero succumb to
the nature of being so monumentally high,
yet so gravemarker low.

A kiss on the cheek,
followed by the inevitable “I love you”:
An easy commitment perched upon the sore hearts
of failures past.

But I shuddered,
never fully admitting it to myself,
catching the words in my throat—
as if that would somehow invalidate them.

For what is a Sara without her H?
And what is a novel without its spine?

And while it did the lonely trick
in the moments where skin touched fluid
and fluid caused a fervent pulse,
I held on to someone else’s poetry.

As fibers of commitment begin splitting loose,
there will be sheets of cloth and paper to lie between
Yes, there are many things to throw one’s self into

Rest cannot revive the emotionally subdued,
so I join a group of impulsive athletes in play  
The least of my worries is a sprawling, purple bruise

Diamonds form on my crown while reviewing sans excuse
for tests hidden in a future lunar month’s craters
Yes, there are many things to throw one’s self into

It has long been knotted, but why tighten my own noose?
“Black or blue ink?” is the only gag made when writing
The least of my worries is a sprawling, purple bruise

It’s water clear, birdbone light, and aptly named Grey Goose
Dusk licks her mouth, consuming my day; I am shadow
Yes, there are many things to throw one’s self into

I could wait for the heart and mind to tumble into truce,
but I long for these brief spins of the pirinola
The least of my worries is a sprawling, purple bruise
Yes, there are many things to throw one’s self into

Sarah Elizabeth Fonseca is

one errant immune system supported by
two mugs of steeping earl grey tea
three pairs of Farmer John socks propped atop
four incomprehensible texts.

Sarah Elizabeth Fonseca is

five paragraphs into S. Plath’s diaries—
six away from slamming it shut.
seven hot baths away from recovery;
eight words away from the limit.

Sarah Elizabeth—