We Sleep the Same, Kate Drakulic

Your name is a splinter,

an ice-breaker

a loop of pearly fog. 

Your nineteen are kill notches 

scratched with an accurate slope

on a buttstock,

a perfect shooting range for Cupid.

I’m slightly in love with you.

A timid grace of a kitten

playing in the grass.

Small ears like two pieces of chewing gum.

Your nose has a bump on the bridge, like Cleopatra’s.

Like an apricot pit got stuck in the spout of a kettle.

My heart used to sink

when you, in the morning,

still ephemeral, not fully incarnated yet,

pulled your thin skin on,

starting from your ankles,

adjusted the elastic belt of the pantyhose,

like a meridian –

an inhabited girl-planet.

I hugged you

displaced, warped;

I dived into a mirror of absurd,

took a shower of refreshing nonsense,

getting brighter.

Pity, I don’t know where you are now.

You see, we only live once;

by pure chance our hearts collide,

and break like  Christmas baubles.

We won’t ever see each other again

in this Universe.

I left you at the window,

and winter light laid out a garden on your shoulders.

Turning a random corner,

I left the Euclidean street.

I’m not there, 

I don’t exist anymore.

And you’re still standing at the window

like Madonna in a kitchen icon,

adding the days you have lived

to the spinal column of January.

You place heavy silver coins

On the frozen eyelids of the dead wasteland. 

The columns of coins are already tall.

They’re going to collapse any moment

on the puddles

covered with thin papery ice…

About the Author

Dmitry Blizniuk · Skovoroda Kharkiv National Pedagogical University

Dmitry Blizniuk is an author from Kharkov, Ukraine. His most recent poems have appeared The Pinch Journal, River Poets , Dream Catcher, Magma, Press53, Sheila Na Gig, Furrow Magazine, Palm Beach Poetry Festival and many others. Dmitry Blizniuk is the author of The Red Fоrest (Fowlpox Press, Canada, 2018). This piece first appeared in Furrow Magazine.

About the Artist

Kate Drakulic · University of Minnesota

Kate Drakulic is a graduating senior at the University of Minnesota who is studying art, journalism, and design. “We Sleep the Same” first appeared in The Tower.