The train car full of yawns and music.
A boy talks of guns while chewing gum.
Pockets of strangers stuffed with detritus:
receipts, wrappers, flotsam of frantic days.
The teabag’s jacket like a condom wrapper.
Please take your trash with you upon Departing,
the sign says. Like that. With a capital letter.
Some words are loaded. Departing:
more somber than the flit of leaving.
I will depart, but I will always return.
When I first loved you I never wanted
you to go home. You brought me
hot tea with milk and sugar and right then
I asked you to marry me. You didn’t
take me seriously but I meant it, as truly
as a dog means each snouty-soft kiss.
After we first hugged I felt as though
every hour I aged a year.
The next night when I saw you,
your dark eyes like hallways, I was no longer
a slim-limbed skittering girl —
but a 30-year-old woman. Desire weighed
on me, rounded me out. I whispered
into your ear, dirty hiccupped thoughts.
Now, the years are really disappeared.
An old matchbook, the cardboard days
nubs. The only question is when I arrive
how will you greet me —
gently, or with the force of your whole
tongue? Tell me what is in this suitcase.
Reach into every pocket of me. It’s your job
to locate the best of me, and throw away
the useless stuff.
♦
Emily Schultz is the co-founder of Joyland Magazine. Her new novel, Men Walking on Water, released with Knopf Canada in 2017. Her previous novel, The Blondes, released in the U.S. with St. Martin’s Press and Picador, in France with Editions Asphalte, and in Canada with Doubleday. It was named a Best Book of the Year by NPR and Kirkus. The Blondes is in development with AMC’s Shudder network for series. Her poetry book, Songs for the Dancing Chicken, was a finalist for the Ontario Trillium Award for Poetry. She now lives in Brooklyn with her husband and son.
She can be found at http://www.emilyschultz.com/
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