Reveal
I was promised the end today.
I was promised the same thing yesterday.
I wonder what it’s like to not breathe,
to have muscles fail you. I’ll find out
someday.
I asked him when he opened the door why he was here.
I couldn’t tell him the truth.
How could I tell someone that they’re not wanted?
Look them cold in the eye
and say that no one wants to see them.
He didn’t know, but I couldn’t touch his pink, molten arm.
Have you ever broken to someone,
and told them that they’re dead?
Then you’ll understand what I’m telling you now.
-Candace Osterhout
Gods
I am blasphemy, the very definition of which is unable to lie,
No. My mud stained shoes stare up at me,
the sharpie
I inhale asks “why?” But I don’t know.
I wonder, sometimes, if the water is real,
or if, maybe, the stream only fills after a rain drop falls
from my nose and teases my lips.
Don’t kiss me. Your eyes do all the
work for you,
but do you remember what you see? In the
painting,
a lesson learns itself in hell. Still,
when I reach for a branch,
is it possible to say I’m limp? I hide
my face in my arm
and wait until you watch for my eyes.
-Candace Osterhout
Authority
Who am I to say that the wind blows,
that an oasis hides behind the sand?
Where is the man who docks at sea and sails on the shore?
I learned in geography that, when land is surrounded,
it calls itself Isle,
and builds more to its sides. But when I
am surrounded,
I quiver like a child in the rain,
and I wonder if I am.
Is it a sin to say that I exist?
Or is it socially acceptable to whither like flame
and extinct?
-Candace Osterhout
