Everything in this world is a door
marked exit, every slack-jawed wave, every
storm-riven branch still caught in the crown.
My mother thinks a road sign lofted
on the wind might take her. I try not to view
autumn’s gale as an invitation, but there's
a hole in the garden where I'd like to live and
the fang-thin moon is barking my name.
I tried once, I swear, to swallow this life
like sustenance, like the bitterest pill.
I feigned I was a woman who hungered,
spoke to strangers in dark bars, tongue
raw with nerve and liquor, asked men
into my bed because wasn’t I meant to
let life rush through me, hold nothing back?
But after they left I took to the lake,
lay wave-lapped on the hard skin of ice,
every cheap thrill on earth no match for
the cold draw of this star-shot nothing.
Everything in this world is a black hole
pulling me toward lightless brink.
Yet the heart’s stubborn drum beats onward,
onward, pitting muscle against gravity, insisting
inertia is enough to keep me at this living
and I can’t disprove it; no matter neon’s
red lure, I carry on, slam every door.
Zoe Boyer was raised in Evanston, Illinois on the shore of Lake Michigan, and completed her MA in creative writing among the ponderosa pines in Prescott, Arizona. Her work has appeared in such publications as The New York Times, Poetry South, Kelp Journal, Plainsongs, RockPaperPoem, About Place, West Trade Review, Little Patuxent Review, The Penn Review, and Pleiades, and has been nominated for Best of the Net.