Today I decided my life was beyond my body,
began the idea on that side of a clearing
where snow pads and ice pace ground
in a certain weakness
where one wants to stay seated in a dream
that they are no longer a part of. The truth?
The magician's secret is purely magic. It's the moment
where you are uncertain if it's actually snowing
outside, then you decide its earth confetti and a just
wind. And that window glass acts more like
a hull breaching through waves. Your head bobs on top
the shoreline. A buoy and its small soft gulls. That people
know far more about loss than they
do about love. And that their bodies will never
admit to this. I’ve watched a body refract a moment.
The visuals are too overwhelming. There’s
a side on a train where everyone is standing. And no one gets off.
Like how satisfaction wants to fall through a roof. As a woman,
I fantasize about its collateral damage.
How I’ve only held hands
in this life. I’ve seen diplomacy
in the small mirror next to my bed,
shrieking. Tried to tuck it back in. That earth’s
perpetual wetness brings forth a pattern.
That art is a chosen war to vindicate it.
Allie McKean is currently a queer poet in the MFA for Poets and Writers at the University of Massachusetts- Amherst. Her work draws on surrealism and lyric to explore how language and time work in tandem in locating the proximities between imagination, dreams, memories, and reality. She is a big fan of mallards, a rich dark green (see this specific hex code: #2C522E), and black coffee.