An Alternate Universe Where the Bullet Missed

You come out west to visit, and fall in love
with how the waves hug the shore, and being a hugger yourself,
decide you belong by the sea.

At a Midsummer bonfire, you meet
your beloved. Spellbound by how they howl at the moon.
In a hushed whisper, you confess. They’re the one.
I set a place for them at my table. We spend
weekends splashing in the surf. The two of us giggle
like children at how dogs shake their butts.

I learn to make your mom’s sausage gravy,
so my house will always smell like our home.

I throw a surprise birthday party for you,
invite everyone you love. You fall down laughing
and hug everyone twice.

When your children are born,
we pace the ward together, waiting for news.

We teach them to play baseball using trees
as bases, which is how I taught you. They learn to grow
tomatoes and tiger lilies, how to dig in the forest for treasure.
We visit the monarch butterfly grove and wonder
what we would do if we had wings.

I love you never stops being true.

On Sunday mornings we eat biscuits
and gravy at my house. We take the kids
to the arcade where you always win at skee-ball.
We talk all the time about the garden, about growing up, about God.

Every Christmas, we buy each other socks. Only we get the joke.

The children go from Little League to car keys, and we dance
the Electric Slide at their weddings, badly. The gray filters
into your beard and I find it handsome.

Some day, it will be you who picks fresh flowers to lay on my grave.

Sara Beth Brooks (she/they) is a queer and disabled self-taught poet and visual artist who explores grief, identity, illness, relationship, and the vulnerability of human bodies. Sara Beth’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Squawk Back, Rogue Agent, Tiny Spoon, and elsewhere. They teach writing and revision workshops online and live with their spouse and a tuxedo cat on the unceded territory of the Nisenan Miwok people, known today as Sacramento, California. You can find her poetry and workshops at http://linktr.ee/sarabethbrooks.