Recovery

Tell me how it feels to have
just one drink, to not give into
that wet disintegration—tell me how
you manage to lift yourself
outside of yourself without wanting
to leave yourself entirely, without wanting
to peel back the layers of memory
until you find yourself, again, standing
giddy beside your father’s funny gift
clawing at the cardboard box marked
Babette, the snapping turtle waiting
for the grand reveal. Tell me how
you keep upright as he watches
your face brighten, then fall.

Somewhere, cedar waxwings fly dizzy
and play dead. Sometimes, I break
where I could bend. What I’m saying is,
I know better. Violence takes no practice.
What I’m trying to say is, I’m trained to make
an enemy out of anyone. I’ve practiced. I believe
in an afterlife just enough to keep a list of who
I’ll leave behind, punch-drunk & trained
to fight. What I’m trying to tell you is,
when I dance, it feels like flight.

Ode To Chosen Family, Charleston, South Carolina

—For Dolores O’Riordan

I remember the stillness of the moment, passing you on the street
in a way that felt like a photograph dissolving in some hidden archive
of human beauty, your face a catalog of abundance, of wayward lives,
head tilted, a doubletake reserved for distant kin who’ve survived
more than they’d care to reveal. You’re walking in my memory,
in the beach of my misgivings, watching gravity move
in slow motion, still singing to someone who will always be
just slightly out of reach, such distance, your fingertips
pointing towards my shirt, a soft tether, our shared recognition—

I love them too. I can’t believe she’s gone….

and suddenly, you’re my family, too—chosen and welcomed,
make a plate welcomed, have seconds, no really,
take more than that welcomed, don’t be shy, sleep beside me,
still and soft welcomed, a full embrace, a homecoming welcomed,
not blood but magic but yes but please but stay but wait don’t leave,
not yet, yes here, right here, tell me your favorite song welcomed,
sing it again, louder welcomed, what moment makes
your bones weak, oh yes, welcome that, welcome in the familiar,
cryptic grief—tell me, who’s hurt you the most?

Who do you miss now, and will you miss me? Walking past you in a city
I’ll never return to, its dark history present in every step we take,
but oh how the darkness follows, doesn’t it, but oh, you’re such
a sudden light, so what history? It’s just us now,
isn’t it? Wait wait it’s coming, dance with me
just once, watch the melody open into a field
of sundrops, sugar maples, the calatheas breathing in the sun.

We’re such a common tragedy, aren’t we—walking towards
and past and through one another, singing and longing in shared
isolation, we’re contained in a fleeting, sly grin, a tide of
why can’t-this-last-forever, this-won’t-last-forever, we’re history now—

I’ll sit in this silence knowing you’ll never return,
preserved in a moment of lilting bliss, our voices
pinned to the air, our bodies keening towards our separate lives.
 

Babette Cieskowski is the author of the poetry chapbook Secrets My Body Keeps (dancing girl press, 2022). She was awarded an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for 2020 & 2024. Her poems have appeared in Zone 3, Frontier Poetry, Crab Orchard Review, Prairie Schooner, Juked, The Laurel Review, among others. Born in Oahu, Hawaii, she has lived in South Florida, Kitzingen, Germany, and Central Texas. She currently lives in Columbus, Ohio where she works with The Ohio Prison Education Exchange Project (OPEEP). Grounded in prison abolition, OPEEP works to increase access to higher education for incarcerated individuals within Ohio prisons.