A Quiet Passing [I]
at night he tells me about the people he’s killed, about the boy
by the river, the woman in her mud & thatch hut, the man
hiding in the sharkskin grasslands
after dinner we kiss & cuddle, we no longer make love,
it is too much, too much to hold & to cradle
within my weather-weary scaffolding
another night of whispers, more chalk marks
on the blackboard, counting counting, as I touch his fingers,
his ears, his feet in renewed prayer
according to the clock he should still be awake, but
he has drowned as dawn wrinkles the shadows,
my eyes rewinding the hours, sore from filming
before, my sister used to keep the stove burning,
half-priced beef & split-pea, as I kept the landline open
for that call from some gum-chewing long-distance operator
behind the shower curtain I sometimes hear him crying,
perhaps it is the shampoo, my feet are slippered & I slip
out to cut some onions so we can both be red eyed
butter & onions with his bacon & grease, his eggs are always
onceover easy, he says my shirt is sexy, says that I’m lucky
to be color blind, to have avoided drafting
better to be color blind than blind, I wonder if my irises
are happy not knowing, only seeing the world in grays,
I go out to the garden, planting iris bulbs for spring
calling my mother, mother calling me, voices carry so far
carrying so much in so little, static splits syllables,
our words tapping in Morse code
contact with dreams & memories have achieved solidity,
no longer the fluid, gaseous vapors of the mind,
even the day cannot liquidate his assets of bombs & bullets
connectivity is the devil’s key, paranoia born out of ifs &
possibilities, salt spilt must be linked to the postman’s ring
to the package from Walgreens special delivery
concern deals with the self before it deals with the concerned,
he never calls his mother, his mother never calling him,
has he not told her…I may soon call her…
digging through an artichoke heart hoping to find a seed
to recall the old youthful green, though beautiful
in romanticized decay, I prefer naivety’s shallow roots
deter the sorrow before it leaves its stain in the house,
hospital wards are better suited, like hotel rooms waiting
to be filled, so much space reserved for the grief of living
A Quiet Passing [II]
dining in, I tentatively order Vietnamese cuisine (tough love
turned torture) to eye the extent of wartime accumulation
I will have to excavate, wanting to force his hand
digesting another doctor’s list of doubts & options, we forage
in the phở with our resorted to forks used in place of
traditional chopstick cutlery, unable to handle the difficult
even before he first kissed me, my hands wanted to come away
with the scent of the farmyard & haystacks where he grew up,
to hold him invisible throughout my days
executing a recon mission for a cheaper apartment one day,
a dog ambushed him as if it could nose the blood he has wished out
out—that red stain even terminal illness could not pale
enter the bathroom now to notice how smell accumulates,
he has been home four days now & I can already tell he’ll have
to be shipped back out before we regain a steady routine
endangered species are collected on lists like fuel for
the underworld & I wonder if it is possible to put his name
on this year’s catalog to ogle & keep stored like a family heirloom
feeling the dust brushed scraped away from his alabaster hand
lying on its white sheet with its ammoniac stench as I sit in
the whitest lighting electricity & glass can contrive
finding time to hunt has reverted into starving myself so that I
can look after him instead, more manic mother caring for a cub,
my mangled lion a’snooze on that dry prairie bedding
feeling a tooth-yank each moment I peer at him in his pale
hospital bed—as if another calcium totem just got lodged
in him, in my attempt to devour him away from this place
finding it ironic that he should be hospitalized by an unseen enemy
lurking not in forest density but in the body, his old self
lying in wait slumbered in an ache turned mundane
I’ve discovered that it takes four generations to domesticate a fox,
to have it purring like a kitten & I wonder how long
it will take to re-domesticate him, my little lion
intent on keeping busy back home, I pace the rooms pattering
as precipitation, directionless until an object pulls me pushes me
in its disarray, mirrors are always tugging cynically
I don’t ask him about his days anymore, he only speaks of the past,
mostly reliving the relief of youth, I am all but forgotten until his eyes
clear head tilting to bring me along into him
if I imitate a killdeer, leading away the danger gnawing around
him—walking wounded as a feint—the hospital nest
may soon be emptied without a prescription of wings
Born in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, Konstantin N. Rega graduated from East Anglia’s Creative Writing MA with the Ink, Sweat and Tears Scholarship. Twice a Dan Veach Young Poet’s Prize finalist and 2019 Best of the Net nominee, he’s been published by Poetry Salzburg Review, Richmond Times-Dispatch, La Piccioletta Barca, Lighthouse Journal, NonBinary Review, amongst others, and is a contributor for Southern Review of Books, Virginia Living, and Spectrum Culture.
