Our hearts are ducklings, waddling
up to ask the stranger: Are you
my husband? Are you my brightest
wound? Do our planetary alignments
warn of kindling or flight? Our hearts
are horses lost at pasture. Our hearts are barely
in the building. What is a heart anyway
but a flickering animal who only speaks
in grunts and clicks to the dark caves
of our bodies, those parts exiled
from sunlight. No I cannot plant my feet
in the sand with you, cannot stand
together in eternal waters until
at least the fifth date. A girl
must have boundaries. A woman,
unmarried, thirty-one years of age
in the writhing south, trapped
along the fleeting coast of youth, must release
each seagull aching for the sky. No,
the swooning gardens are where I go alone
to cry—unless someday you take revenge
on time and wed me there. Bonus points if you
too visit lamplit marshes at night to hide
your face, for only among the oaks
and ghosts do you feel truly safe
to tremble. Best case scenario: import a lover
from Cincinnati or St. Paul, some cooler
denser place where the air doesn’t brine
your spirit and leather your liver. I am
trying my best. I am trying
my best. Will you please force me
to adore you? Will you please wear
real shoes? Will you be undeniable, cast
the heavens over us and make them appear
like plastic stars on my childhood ceiling,
incite me to beg you for the disappointing
bondage called forever? Maybe, if we both agree
to settle, we can make our deaths intertwine.
Maybe we can really make it.
Erin Slaughter is the author of the short story collection A Manual for How to Love Us (Harper Perennial, 2023), and two books of poetry, including The Sorrow Festival (CLASH Books, 2022). Her debut memoir, The Dead Dad Diaries, is forthcoming from Autofocus Books in 2025. Her writing has appeared in Lit Hub, Electric Literature, Prairie Schooner, CRAFT, and elsewhere. She is currently Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Coastal Carolina University. Find her online at erin-slaughter.com
