Samara Golabuk

Song to a mirror

5/2 was the day you got good at “Whatever,”
that game of leaving-first without leaving.
You’d had the scent of happiness
over that last hill this morning,
but now it’s lost,
dispersed into untraceable atoms
across the neighborhood—

the same neighborhood where things have changed,
and M_____ and R____ stand in the yard screaming
for two hours in the morning.
“You promised me something!”
“I don’t deserve you!”
and you didn’t know what that meant, either,
not really.

Bending without breaking
is easier than it seems,
and more dangerous.
It leads to standing in yards at 7am
and hurling decibels at your love
who volleys them back,
well-placed arcs that shred the neighborhood
with their fictions we believe.

Nearly 40,
on loan to the planet,
you believed in “special” until this morning
when you lost the scent of that, too,
in the untraceable atmosphere.
It must be fluttering among the dogwood blooms
and Confederate jasmine—
40 feet up the pine, out of sight
among the unremarkable tree limbs.
You’re just like everyone else,
and you’ve lost so many poems that way,
you can’t possibly be bitter.
Maybe now you can get some sleep.

Author Bio

Samara Golabuk is a self-employed graphic designer, living with her husband, her son, and a dog in a house with a garden in Gainesville, FL. She is a BA in Creative Writing candidate at Southern New Hampshire University. Her work has appeared in such publications as Quincy Writers Guild, Strong Verse, 322 Review, and others. She’s pretty sure the garden thing gives you the wrong idea about her.