FINALIST, 2018 LAUX/MILLAR POETRY PRIZE CHELSEA DINGMAN
After You Have Gone after Kevin Prufer Your room still smells of smoke. The walls, yellowed, but unpapered. You never believed I was allergic. Ashen, I can’t clean anything. The wood table, bare, except for the rings from the tree that was felled to give you somewhere to eat alone. That last visit, the kids were so small. You bought them food, but the fridge remained empty. The city, swollen with snow. All accidents add up to these quiet rooms at some point, I think. Everyone going on around us as if it was expected that a woman would drink enough wine to forget disease lionizes the skin, the cells. The cancer, an afterthought. What did you really want to know? You held my son in your lap, the other playing quietly on the floor. I can’t revisit that moment. I can’t revise the sting of snow that escaped winter with us. Outside, tonight, I breathe in the cold. Like smoke, it stings my throat. It’s not light that divides one room from the next. I was so sure you’d come back from this. Instead, light empties every room. The windows, shot-through.
Raleigh Review | 21
