Heather Sager


Candle

It was night. Also, I was a candle. My candle-body stood on a dish on the kitchen table. The window drapes fluttered. A gentle wind danced. I kept wavering. Somehow, everyone knew I was a candle. My sister stopped by. She tried to blow me out. She checked if she was alone, and then hovered over me, and she blew. “You didn’t spend enough time with me,” she said. Ever since she quit her job at the bank, this was her mantra. My candle-mind fritzed, and I clung to a sensation like cold water. But, after my sister left the room, my soul sparkled. I fire-flumed, back into life. My ex-lover entered. He drew a huge breath into his lungs. I knew he had his reasons. Poof. Then he left. Again, the cold-mind. Then, the kindling flame. I was a stubborn little candle.

I stripped all the poetry from my life
and all I have left is…





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Anxiety when someone asks
How are you really doing?
I’m a mess, so are my papers back home, 
I don’t answer at the café how I think about 
the confused writings strewn about my desk, 
my room, with the unmade bed and blinds…always pulled…
That feeling that I mess up my life
and no one else falters. The businesswoman at the café
stands erect…
Without color and light in my soul, I hate myself 
(Yet I still love you).
Obsessions I have about eyes, the eyes of people I see, 
their positions and moods, looking at me, in this way, poetry sneaks back…
Self-torture over my misunderstandings, doubts,
personal inconstancies. Clouds drift further away on the horizon.
It’s because I question and worry
that my face looks like this. I avoid the mirror.
The times I didn’t believe in myself
and so, fucked up.
The times I didn’t appreciate
what I do have. The days I angered people I didn’t want to…
The compulsive walking that I do along the streets and paths 
under the sky. As if that will ever help. Yet…the clouds return, 
the clouds shifting above in a swirling mood, like eyes.
The dreaming…the horizon…

Heather Sager lives in Illinois. Her most recent poetry appears in Version (9), Magma, The Orchards, Fahmidan Journal, Red Eft, The Bosphorus Review of Books, Shabd Aaweg Review, and more. Her recent fiction appears in The Fabulist and elsewhere.

 
 

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