The Girl in the Ladder
I used to think love was two next-door
neighbors with a string connecting two
aluminum cans, whispering I love you
from bunk beds just before their dreams started,
but then drunk, I buried my head
like a jackalope in your lap on the subway
and woke up safe in my own bed the next day.
I used to think love was the bed springs
squeaking their love-lullaby through
the floorboards, the lady from the apartment
below tapping on her ceiling with a broom-end,
lonely and horny, until they told me
my insides were expired and the only thing I could suck
on was grape popsicles during chemo, that there would
be no more tapping, but you softened the sting of the knifepoint
and spooned me because you wanted to.
I used to think love was flower
power pancakes and a potted petunias
on a retro bedtray late Sunday afternoon
till that vicious ogre disguised as a friend,
stomped out of the forest and ripped open a flower,
that wasn’t his in a fit of sex and insecurity,
and as I hid in the bushes you held out your hand, sang to me,
and I could see my soul slipping back into my body.
I used to think love was two people animating
their own story until you danced off the top of
the page and I climbed up a ladder to try and catch
you by the shoestrings, but you latched onto a bluejay
following a seaplane and flew away
in search of a better life, or at least a different one.
Now there’s a girl stuck up in a ladder in a story
she doesn’t understand, a girl who doesn’t think
about love at all, looks down at the world through
the rotted rungs at the gobbledygook where people
have become only shadows smoking cigarettes and shooting guns.
BIO: Brie Huling was born in Eugene, Oregon, in 1981. She spent several years living in Long Beach, California, and graduated with a B.A in Creative Writing, Women's Studies, and Sociology from Long Beach State. She has traveled all over the world finding much of her inspiration in the contrast of different cultures, worlds, and ways of survival. She is currently working on her MFA at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, and spends most of her time riding the subway, writing poetry, and working in a jazz club in the east village. This is her second appearance in Verdad Magazine.
