Postcard Never Sent to My Lover’s Hometown
I am writing to you from the bigness of my small life, from all the time it’s taken to crawl back into this body that poured itself out into the Columbia River in a way I thought would’ve made you want to leave less, or maybe, made me want you to leave more. You know what they say about women—always, in a way, beckoning. There is still so much I want to tell you: all particularities. How the plates that never made it to Ohio are now fixed with a meal for a new lover, home-cooked. How he makes me feel young like we were. How I am always trying to make it “like we were.” Do you know how many starting overs it’s taken to get to this small life, these giving lakes, these dinner parties and our deep belly laughs, all of our wondrous shrieks. How finally, the airport is a celebration. How these days, I’ve subverted cardinal direction and believe in God. How, every time I drive back towards my water town, I pass a road named after you. And how, every time, I never take the exit, too broken still to figure it out, would rather lay stranded at the side of my heaving delusion, the start and stop of it, how it always seems to get caught in the throat. How I stifle my own name just to keep it in. Through the grapevine, I am hearing of all the ways that you are changing. I pick at the distance like a broken nail, hate the way it gets caught in almost everything. No matter what, you will always be my muse, y’know? All of your splintering and harmonious forms, splashing out on the edge of this lifetime while I watch, sunkissed and adoring. Right now, out my new window, the sun is slated like the morning I left, a testimony to how we want to give everything shape. I rise, and start another new day without you. The kettle’s whistle blooms into a squeal until the whole room is shaking. I do not run for cover. I wait and watch it sing.
RODLYN-MAE BANTING is a Filipino American poet, journalist, and cultural critic writing at the intersections of gender, race, the arts, and empire. Their poetry has appeared in AAWW’s The Margins, Apogee, No, Dear, and elsewhere. They received an MA in Gender and Women’s Studies from the University of Wisconsin – Madison and are currently pursuing a PhD in Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies at the University of Oregon. Though they are currently based in the Pacific Northwest, they will always consider themself a Midwest transplant.
