Haylee Schwenk
Photo by Maria Perme
Haylee Schwenk is a poet and editor who has lately been considering the many communities that hold her up and save her life, over and over again. These include former college dorm-mates, “church ladies,” her family, and many poets in northeast Ohio and beyond—so many people that there is not space to name them all here. Her work has been published in Great Lakes Review, Q/A, Panoply, and Pudding Magazine.
A month after you died
I dropped the last of your opioids
into the take-back unit
conveniently located in the pharmacy area;
the opening was big enough
to dump the whole box of Hycodan at once,
for which I was grateful
(not having a chance to rethink it).
When I found the small-dose packets
the nurse had told us would
take the edge off, allow you to sleep,
I wondered what it would be like,
not feeling for a little while,
sleeping a whole night without you
walking in the back door
with that grin, your blue eyes bright,
like you were hiding some secret, as if
you might sneak up behind me
in the kitchen, laugh when I said watch it,
mister, I have a knife, spin me around
for a kiss.
Never
It is possible
you could find a new companion,
could be wrapped in his arms
or his jacket on a cold night,
together could plant a garden, tend it,
could spend mornings in the kitchen where
he would slice peppers while you
stir eggs and prepare the pan—
you could sit on the porch with coffee
and listen to the rain.
It might happen
that you will know a new lover,
that he will delight in the curve
of your ear, inhale at the vellus hairs
on your neck, linger on your freckled
shoulders, run his finger across your collarbone
and down your breastbone—
but he will never hold his hands
over your hollow belly and marvel
our children lived here.
Sheila-Na-Gig Inc. 