By: Schuyler Mitchell
Future me is washing her dishes in the sink
Sockless, cockeyed, prone to puckering
Her fingers drop waterlockets on the linoleum
Future me sucks the sauce off, presses thumb to teeth
Hides sun in quiver
Parts the soft pink flesh of cheek
And scoops out rusted timewrinkles
Future me knows bodies like pirate maps and witch spells
Dark matter, fishflight
When the bottom drops out and the bottle rocket blasts,
She knows how to waive her grief
Crave sweat in the hum of twilight
Future me is roaming through seaside caves and
Discovering lost things and
Holding them out to you in the palm of their hand,
Saying, here, this is what I’ve gleaned from life, and
Here, future me is breaking and entering –
Didn’t you see?
They dropped off their slumberwishes in the foyer
Then collapsed on a pillow of moth wings
Tied cherry stems to bedframes
And fed oranges to sugar spies
(Future me waxes and wanes with the seahorses
To hell with ocean tides)
No girl nor woman, future me is just a magnifying glass
And a lamppost
And a moonmass of undulating light
Future me is humble but desirous
Kind, maybe even gentle now
But most of all, future me is swaying, singing, in the kitchen The ceiling parts
I look up
I see stars
Schuyler Mitchell is a Brooklyn-based journalist and writer, originally from North Carolina and California. Their reporting and criticism has been published by The Intercept, Los Angeles Magazine, and Consequence, and their poetry has appeared in the Agave Review.