Sandra Kolankiewicz
Things Not Real
The first time I emptied I thought I’d die
from it, how grief does not wash over you
at the beginning but rather pounds you
down so you can’t stand up, have to take the
wave on your knees. You can lose the world you
know simply by submerging, resurface
to a view you don’t recognize, under
water for thirty seconds while the sky
grows a new skin, the cliffs shed lavender,
become monuments you don’t recognize,
which mean nothing to you except you are
small. Next, you will see the invisible
waves on dry land to which most people are
oblivious, crashing on the table
besides yours in the café, engulfing
and separating the couple eating
there from their little boy carried away
by the backwash, the swash all that matters,
leaving them empty armed, wondering why
they are the only ones wet, cold, without
their baby. No one else notices, the
cash register ringing, music playing,
everyone else at the other counters
talking or looking at a phone. In the
parking lot, a man is sucked past the booth
and into an alley. No one sees but
me. An airplane pilot on the news says
he was carried away by a force he
could not resist nor understand to find
himself later facing a jury. I
can’t judge anything with my own eyes, don’t
rely on yours, either, or my neighbor’s,
for most of us see things not real, just don’t
discuss. Me with my waves, you with all your
conspiracies, her with the angry hounds
at her heels, another watching the stars
crashing around him while he mows the lawn.
In the Every Day
If I had a moment, I’d divide it
with you, turn the gaze of my memory
on so you could see what I know, feel what
I share with the dying coral reef, the
white-bellied leopard shark floating above
it, red-lipped clown fish swimming towards me in
the crackling water. Here on land, thirty
years and a world away, dawn silently
gathers itself to face the day watching
over starlings that have commandeered the
feeder, hard to protect lives so bent on
destruction, which fight like prisoners who
don’t realize they are free and make a mess
of seed that was left out for all, giving
them the privilege to be themselves like
acquiescing to their right to pillage
while wanting to focus on cardinal
and sunflower, having to shine light on
all, even those who cannot possibly
deserve illumination, finding the
raw and the sublime in the every day.
