Sapphic Voices Poetry

Poetry by Sarah Haas

Poetry Set One

truthequalschoice[at]yahoo.com

U-Haul

Copyright © by Sarah Haas, April 15, 2007

I still remember the day
I left you,
that desolate, opaque sky,
your ambivalence,
eyes darting away
to trace the top of a U-Haul van,
an inane comment
so dismissive
I wanted to
rend the grin
from your face.

I kept reminding myself
that it was I
who ended it,
I, who was leaving,
but your expression
inundated me,
so unmoving it
pulled apart my insides,
turned them empty,
bruised the flesh above.

Your breasts pushed against
the sides of
that EMT uniform,
buttons tenuous from the weight,
and I tried to avert my gaze,
keep it focused on the
slight curve of your back instead.

I wondered briefly if I could mend us,
pacify this discord,
unpack my clothes,
return the U-Haul,
and I peered at you
expectant,
almost presumptuous,
hoping you felt the same.

But your eyes shifted,
sunk inside themselves,
retracted
instantly,
my latent desire
to move foreword and hold you
curtailed by the grim knowledge
that my departure
was the very catalyst
for your ebullience,
my love,
far exceeding
yours.

To My Mother

Copyright © by Sarah Haas, April 15, 2007

You stalk me through these waking hours,
flesh branded, mind inscribed,
your name scrawled in black ink.

Boney, protruding nose, calloused hands, insoluble eyes
bleed into my nights,
the way you balanced a hammer
casually in one palm, a walnut in the other.

When I was a child you would sit at
the kitchen table gazing out a window
into the wooded area beyond our yard,
your eyes, glass,
body, rigid,
sitting so still and charged that
I feared you would jump up and run into
that bucolic landscape,
never to be seen again.

Never once guessing
Death
to be your exodus
from this ephemeral life.

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