Ally Malinenko’s second book of poetry, Crashing to Earth, is forthcoming from Tainted Coffee Press. Her first book of poetry, Wanting Bone, was published by Six Gallery Press and her first novel for children, Lizzy Speare and the Cursed Tomb, was recently published by Antenna Books. Ally currently lives in the part of Brooklyn the tour buses don’t come to and she blathers on at her blog.
Reading My Life
By Ally Malinenko
For a second act.
Something new.
I’ve used up what I had in this life.
I’m ready to find myself
in a city I don’t know, amongst people who
don’t speak
or won’t speak my language.
I want to open my eyes and find
myself in a traffic jam. Up front
will be an accident. There will be sirens
and horror and I will watch myself experience it.
I will see the blood this time.
Or I want to open my eyes and be there
cutting across a field to another house.
There will be starlings and cardinals,
the birds of winter. The ones that stay.
And inside the house there will be another me,
telling another story,
about the first life. This one.
Before the start of the next one.
Like chapters
and the space between
being on the page before you remember
your old lover’s scent or laugh or sound.
At first they are lost to you and then they come back, hard and fast.
Their trembling hands, the rise and fall of their chest.
One day it will all be gone.
It leaves, and that space of memory waits to be filled with something else.
I’m ready.
Tell me,
when is it going to happen?
