"Don't Stop" by Josephine Florens
Emma Bolden | Contemporary History
The trees spend the last of their coppers.
Everyone’s selling their fists and my nose
just bleeds and bleeds. In better times
we have no idea we’re living in better times.
Every blessing settles down in bed
next to a curse. Sometimes I look out
of my window and think, what’s so great
about that? The blinds snap shut. A change
in season changes nothing. Neither does
my handful of Kleenex, red, red, red.
When the first boy broke my heart, I imagined
my actual heart, bleached bloodless, unpumping.
My Sicilian grandfather offered to send him
a black handprint and I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t
consider it. I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t sometimes think
revenge is a synonym for relief. Late November, and all
around me the air conditioner still hums out its chill. It’s easy,
if you’re not careful, to hear a threat as a comfort, as a song.
Everyone’s selling their fists and my nose
just bleeds and bleeds. In better times
we have no idea we’re living in better times.
Every blessing settles down in bed
next to a curse. Sometimes I look out
of my window and think, what’s so great
about that? The blinds snap shut. A change
in season changes nothing. Neither does
my handful of Kleenex, red, red, red.
When the first boy broke my heart, I imagined
my actual heart, bleached bloodless, unpumping.
My Sicilian grandfather offered to send him
a black handprint and I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t
consider it. I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t sometimes think
revenge is a synonym for relief. Late November, and all
around me the air conditioner still hums out its chill. It’s easy,
if you’re not careful, to hear a threat as a comfort, as a song.
Emma Bolden is the author of a memoir, The Tiger and the Cage (Soft Skull), and the poetry collections House Is an Enigma, medi(t)ations, and Maleficae. Her fourth poetry collection, God Elegy, is forthcoming from BOA Editions. An NEA Fellowship recipient, she is an editor of Screen Door Review.
Josephine Florens is a Ukrainian artist based in Germany. Her paintings explore identity, memory, and resilience through expressive color and symbolic form. Exhibited internationally, her works have appeared in journals and collections across Europe and North America.
