"Pressed Rooms" by Elspeth Jensen
I want to give you the backyard, where I lived gliding down
creamy lemon custard slides when I was young, young, younger.
I want to build a bridge over the black tar ocean between us.
The glare of glass we squint behind to see each other.
Locked in these houses, bodies with doors to find the world.
Come find me in the room where I wound through tentacles
of jungle gym. Static surged my thighs. I thought magic sparked
the dismount. If the horizon had not melded across time,
if I could have seen the ground below, the years of quiet hallways,
the squealing behind distant doors, I would not have pressed my feet.
The waning crescent puckering from my knee, the naked line
through my left eyebrow—tie them to the room I was sixteen,
wandering through a whiskey sunset, trusting oak tree knots
to leverage me up, up, up. There are rooms you can’t follow me into.
But I’ll ask you to try. Rove through me into the nights the pipes
wailed and the vents sang ghosts. Do you hear? There were nights
the dishwasher churned wet thunder. I closed my eyes, pretended
I was the ocean, I wanted to peel the paper from the walls,
glue beneath my fingernails, wanted anywhere else. The bleach-white
drywall, the clean pull of waves. I want to tell and tell and be told,
want to know if we can heave these bodies across streets, clasp
houses together and live with ears pressed to pressed rooms between.
creamy lemon custard slides when I was young, young, younger.
I want to build a bridge over the black tar ocean between us.
The glare of glass we squint behind to see each other.
Locked in these houses, bodies with doors to find the world.
Come find me in the room where I wound through tentacles
of jungle gym. Static surged my thighs. I thought magic sparked
the dismount. If the horizon had not melded across time,
if I could have seen the ground below, the years of quiet hallways,
the squealing behind distant doors, I would not have pressed my feet.
The waning crescent puckering from my knee, the naked line
through my left eyebrow—tie them to the room I was sixteen,
wandering through a whiskey sunset, trusting oak tree knots
to leverage me up, up, up. There are rooms you can’t follow me into.
But I’ll ask you to try. Rove through me into the nights the pipes
wailed and the vents sang ghosts. Do you hear? There were nights
the dishwasher churned wet thunder. I closed my eyes, pretended
I was the ocean, I wanted to peel the paper from the walls,
glue beneath my fingernails, wanted anywhere else. The bleach-white
drywall, the clean pull of waves. I want to tell and tell and be told,
want to know if we can heave these bodies across streets, clasp
houses together and live with ears pressed to pressed rooms between.
Elspeth Jensen earned her BA in Creative Writing from Western Washington University, and is currently pursuing an MFA at George Mason University. She is the Fiction Editor for Sweet Tree Review and the Assistant Poetry Editor for So to Speak. Her writing can be found or is forthcoming in journals such as the Bellevue Literary Review, Rust + Moth, Gone Lawn, After the Pause, The Midway Review, The Penn Review, and elsewhere.
Thomas Gillaspy is a northern California photographer. His photography has been featured in numerous magazines including the literary journals: Compose, Portland Review and Brooklyn Review. Further information and additional examples of his work are available at: http://www.thomasgillaspy.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomasmichaelart/
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