Drowning Faults
/Restless at night, Carson wished
he was someone other than himself.
Carson eavesdropped on the voices
of conflicting motives in his head.
Elissa loved him, and that’s better
than anything else.
He shifted his pillow and looked
at the ceiling, but envisioning Elissa
and her deep green eyes that sparkle
when they miss him.
He tossed the covers off his body
and stumbled to his feet.
Carson moved to the window and spliced
the blinds with his fingers.
The sun scaled the sky,
and his flaws climbed the horizon
of his loved ones, whose ambitions sank below the murky lake.
Carson convinced himself that Elissa’s disconnected phone
was because she couldn’t pay
and not that she had changed her phone number
to avoid contact.
“I love you,” Elissa said.
Elissa and Carson had dated for five years.
She made him laugh.
They’d been an item since meeting on TikTok five years ago.
Elissa and Carson exchanged messages,
leading to their real-life meeting.
They’ve been together ever since.
“I love her so,” he’d say in his sleep.
Carson’s self-esteem leaks through his ears,
but his empathy for himself glows like bombs
exploding in the Middle East.
It makes sense, like clockwork.
Life set him up, robbing him
of his flaws because
they don’t like what they’ve created.
Carson caught loneliness one night
and wrapped confusion around its neck.
Thick, dark clouds hid the day’s bright rays.
Carson observed a gem-blue stream in the forest.
It was seeping and dribbling
as it swerved through tall
stacks of evergreen trees.
Carson threw grief into this lake of misery.
It nearly killed him last summer
when an undercurrent
pulled him beneath the surface,
of white, rushing lake water.
Carson drowned last summer
and had it not been for an undercurrent, he’d
have washed ashore.
The freshwater awakened
his will to live.
He was one paycheck
from getting evicted.
The flowers on the kitchen
table withered with their age.
Carson snapped out
of his self-pity and told the voices
that hell wants them back
because life is love.
Carson lifted his gaze, shielding his eyes,
and smiled at the cloudless sky,
holding Elissa’s hand.
By Andy Cooper
From: United States
Twitter: AC0040