No Backsies
the extra-large mini-fridge starts up a shimmy
while I’m mid-sentence with my father on the phone
I roll my shoulders against my freshman year cinder block dorm walls
and the ceiling splits—
in pokes the head of the Dolphin That Cannot Lie
my roommate’s Grapenuts box leaps from the shaking fridge
and out spill my preschool paintings, plastic bubble hair ties,
and mermaid figurines. They roll like blueberries.
You can never take back what you did says the dolphin,
grabbing my phone and talking over my snot-choked voice
and I don’t have to give you a minute more of my time.
middle-aged me opens the ground floor window
and pours my heart back into my coffee cup. It is
a vegan hibiscus donut and I eat the whole thing.
the dolphin is trying on my roommate’s bootyshorts
and asking if season five of Gilmore Girls has been posted
to the campus P2P network yet. We’re staying in tonight,
it says, and it’s true, but only tonight. No lingering
in bed for a week over a parent I cannot change.
I don’t even remember my phone flipping shut.
before the hole in the ceiling closes, a box of one hundred
nine by twelve manila envelopes drops through. What are those for?
I ask the dolphin. My middle-aged self answers
I’m going to teach you how to mail your poems out.
But first, I tug on the ends of my razor-cut bobbed hair:
five generations of my grandmothers appear
on my extra long twin, each at the age they were
before anyone had betrayed their trust.
I have invented the heist movie. We are taking it all back.
Chiara Di Lello is a queer writer and educator who loves coffee, art, and bees, and unequivocally supports the movement for Palestinian liberation. Her poems have appeared in Okay Donkey, Variant Lit, Stanchion Zine, and more, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.
