by Romy Rhoads Ewing
cheap
someone ransacked my shit and pawned them before i got to never the
satisfaction kept for myself of being loved and
passed on to someone else's hands
then someone else's again
do you think i'll hold you/it/him/him/her again ever
maybe my change back when i pay for quesabirria in quarters karmic retribution even though i
say so sorry as i reach up to the truck window maybe you’d sit in my center console and peer
up at the light, too i would drive through the nice neighborhoods and admire
they’d just be neighborhoods to you, though
it never would have worked, of course
i am picturing you as a souvenir penny
from each trip we took or didn’t
or a copper iud no actually that’s too much even for me
look i don’t want you like that anymore
but the statistics of it are interesting to me
who ends up with the coins in the bottom of the well
who’s reaping what i sowed after i stopped dragging
my fingers through the loam and walked away
riding the coattails of each of my wishes
you made the first move and so you moved further
i never let you teach me chess, i’m sorry
you and i circulating but never touching perfect ships in the night,
turning the lighthouse on and off, edging and then dying
or maybe never quite
stuck in samsara
pressed into nickel
holding my wrists
down, reddening my neck
south fork
my dreams radicalize me better than the real world
and when i stood in the water you no longer kept me water in the
womb and i was born again colder
i awoke from some dream in which the world was narrower maybe duller in the sense
that you were not the focal point they talk about people walking into the river and
forgetting everything to me, this is indistinguishable
or rather i remembered how to breathe unstaggered
as i stumble into a body that wants me in it
****
Romy Rhoads Ewing writes from Sacramento, California, where she was born and raised. her work has appeared in HAD, Oyez Review, Rejection Letters, Bullshit Lit, Major 7th Magazine, and more. she is the author of please stay (Bottlecap Press, 2024) and someday [everybody but] you + i will laugh about all of this (3rd Annual Hallow-Zine Fest, Oak Park Brewery, 2025). she also runs the archival site SACRAMENTO DIRTBAG ARCHIVES. more can be found at romyrhoadsewing.xyz