Jen Prince

Brittle Mirror

I look for you on ghost-gray days, harbor-docked
in bitter glow of absinthe fog and absent sleep, 
tripping from Sachuest to Black Point, places you named with old friends. 
You used to paint and drink and know everything 
and now the light is wrong—
a vain prayer of soft-core sun, saltless and spoiling. 

You can't tell me I don't like the cold
just because I shiver.
I am barest untouched earth, late-night licorice murk. I am
dreaming of dirt that knows the feel of my palms. I am 
waiting for the green line, wet hair crisp with frost, 
wondering if it will break. 
 
When you said your favorite word was petrichor, I thought
of course. 
I couldn't stop thinking about what it meant, saw bent faces 
blur in every cobblestone, smelling of sweet rot. Yours, 
a lovely thing diminished in all the usual ways. 
That’s when I remember you best.
 
My memory is a too-close shave—the nicking, quick blush that blooms 
on your throat, pale as the moon—beading and dipping out of sight.
 
A meteor loathe to fall.

Jen Prince is a writer and editor based in Memphis, TN, where she manages communications at a local nonprofit. Her poetic work centers on ideas of separation, memory, and identity.