Let me make an altar for
every pair of sunglasses
I’ve ever lost on the road,
every intrusive thought
locked in my throat.
Let me fight depression
with a toothpick
then a timeline, fear
strong like a current.
I’ve never known a river
to be as unforgiving
as when I find a man
on the bridge edge
surrounded by a flock
of magpies, a torrent
of white-foam, then beaks—
I don’t know what
to tell him when he
chooses my embrace
except that I’m here
I’m here for him
somehow still alive
at the same age
as my mom when
she pushed me out
of her body into
water so different
than the waves raging
below: both of us held
by hands we didn’t know.
Alyx Chandler (she/her) is a writer from Alabama who received her MFA in creative writing and poetry at the University of Montana, where she was the Richard Hugo fellow and taught rhetoric and poetry. She now lives and writes in Chicago. She currently works as a Writing Support Specialist at National Louis University and a Poet-in-Residence at the Chicago Poetry Center, where she teaches poetry to children in the Chicago Public School System.