Aubade
You blacked out
the night, forgot how we
jumped off cliffs into Lake Superior,
the October water filling
our mouths until we felt
the gods get drunk
inside us. I long for you, the sun
you turn toward me
and away from me at will.
You’re something I
evaporate into, the way
the water of our cells turns
to rain when left
outside. You forgot
the origami snakes we lit, talking
of Prometheus, his fire,
the eagle that eats
his liver each morning. I spoke
into the 4 a.m. darkness
these things never happened,
twisted your skin
until it bruised, your moan
an elegy to the last
fluttering thing in my chest.
Teach me to forget, to button
sun over my breasts, explode
my past in a nova
of amniotic light. I swear,
the storm took
your body, and through
light flickering on our wet
shoulders, I learned
your consciousness hides
in the undertow, can be tempted
back with a single note
from a longneck bottle.
The wind had sounded that same
low G through white pines
for thousands of years.
“Aubade” appears in Issue 8.2 of New South
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Brandi George grew up in rural Michigan. Her first collection of poetry, Gog, is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press in the fall of 2015. Poems from this manuscript have appeared in such journals as Gulf Coast, Prairie Schooner, Ninth Letter, Columbia Poetry Review and The Iowa Review. She currently resides in Tallahassee, where she is a Ph.D. candidate at Florida State University.
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