It Is Evergreen to Say the Word Evergreen by Leigh Chadwick

What they don’t teach you in college is that every house is haunted if someone fell in love in it.

It Is Evergreen to Say the Word Evergreen

by Leigh Chadwick

There was light, the fake kind, the kind that always looks like it just chipped a tooth. There was a cigarette, maybe two, though it’s hard to count when your heart beats in multiples of hummingbird. I can’t figure out how much of my heart is fiction, but you haven’t tasted depressed in weeks, so I’m not worried about the spider climbing across the bedroom ceiling. Nine years later I watch you get dressed for tomorrow two hours early. Our bodies, older than we both remember—softer, achingly quiet, loose buttons on a flannel—though the sheets still smell the same, and the sweat on your neck is still my favorite drink to order at the bar. Nine years later and I am drawn back to the weather of ache. What they don’t teach you in college is that every house is haunted if someone fell in love in it. I could walk through a wall but where would I go? It is hard to say goodbye to what was already a goodbye. It took too long for me to learn that if you pour a beer into the ocean, it will become the ocean. When was the last time the moon was given a bath? My left hand is drunk. I wish magic was cheaper. Still, I am covered in clouds. Come see.

First published in ONLY POEMS (November 2023)