Of Figure and Field

On the phone you say:
I wish I could forgive you,
but I can’t. I stare across
my apartment. There’s
a bowl a girl had given me—
appalled at my lack
of kitchenware. It’s white
and blue and thin.
I shudder at the rotten
emptiness that any bowl,
especially this bowl,
today, prompts.
There is no such thing
as forgiveness—
the shadow of error
is terribly permanent.
How can this be?
That it isn’t us
sitting there on the ridiculous
beach— with our naked
thighs pressed together,
tragically in love—
the whole city
some sweeping mess behind us.
Who cares? I keep thinking.
Slur of nights.
A car alarm starts. It’s almost funny,
the gravity of loss, in moments like these.
The phone hums against my desk,
it’s not you, I tell myself—
bewildered and undone, not you.
The air is so crisp,
the radiator so loud,
I cannot even forget that I am alive,
I am here, right now, I am missing you.
Come back.

S. Yarberry is a trans poet and writer. Their poetry has appeared in Tin House, Indiana Review, The Offing, Berkeley Poetry Review, jubilat, The Washington Post's The Lily Magazine, among others. Their other writings can be found in Bomb Magazine and Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly. S. has a MFA in Poetry from Washington University in St. Louis where they now hold the Junior Teaching Fellowship in Poetry. They currently serve as the Poetry Editor of The Spectacle.