ACROBATICS

In the underbelly of grief
is more grief and beneath that
lies the pit of your stomach.
Daylight brings the catastrophe
of thought and you think
you are always just a thin veil
away from the unthinkable.
But you rise and rinse
the silt from your hair,
your teeth, your bones.
You bottle the balm
of your body and get to work
kicking death like a stone
further down the road.
You come to believe it
somehow wise to chart out
the future with old maps.
(A carousel must be a metaphor
for something, after all.)
You get so deft at the acrobatics
of survival that you learn
to abandon a place
without ever leaving.
You do not notice the sunbeam
that has crawled all day
across the floor just to sit
at your feet.

*

RATIONALE FOR A KISS YOU DIDN’T WANT

Because the air was thick as spit
and he groped your left breast with butter
fingers during a matinee so you took that
to mean he’s laid a claim to your heart.
Because this is how you practiced opening
yourself in the cheap mirror tacked
to your closet door, its silver lick plastic
and pushing back against your softest parts.
Because your father left you stranded
in a man’s world and humility gathered
her skirts the day your mother named you
slut. Because why not. Because you’d slurp
just about anything to dislodge the terror
from the mauve of your throat and if you keep
his face busy he might forget to reach
for the other breast. Because you think
this time it’ll work, and no one ever taught you
to drink from the well of your two hands
and no one ever showed you a better use
for the fire in your mouth.

*

Alina Kalontarov is an educator, poet, and amateur photographer from New York. She collaborates on the editorial teams of various publications and is a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee with work that can be found or is forthcoming in The Threepenny Review, ONLY POEMS, Sky Island Journal, Gather, Thimble, Sand Hills, and elsewhere.