Matt Terhune’s work has appeared in several journals, including American Poetry Review, Antioch Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, and Narrative. His first chapbook, Bathhouse Betty, won the Coal Hill Review Chapbook Prize and was published by Autumn House Press. He lives in Los Angeles.---------
University Hall
He stands by the elevator’s pewter door,
a Dodgers backpack strapped
to his small frame.
At first, I think he’s talking to himself,
whispering “I’m okay, I promise”
into the stillness of the hall,
when I notice the white wire
spiraling into a cell phone
in his palm, the Erase Hate bracelet
circling his thin wrist, its violet ring.
He’s talking to his mother,
who’s rummaged for the phone at 2 am
too many times, pulled on boots,
the soft armor of sweats,
tucked her wild hair under a Lakers’ cap
and swiped the keys from the counter.
I stand next to him
as each floor arrives and passes
and think of the nights I spent
passed out in the street, someone else’s bed,
with a shirt my mother bought me blown open,
jeans swirled around my knees.
I’ve been watching Sopranos reruns for days.
Last night, Carmela sobbed
as she watched her son disappear
down the tiled corridor of a psych ward
after sinking to the floor of the family pool—
a plastic bag cinched over his head,
cinder block dangling from a rope
looped around his ankles—
and I wonder what my mother saw in her dreams
the night I told her I loved men.
I don’t know this kid
who leans into the bright metal
of the humming car, running his fingers
over the red moon of each button,
but as the doors open and he crosses the sill
above the empty shaft
I’m suddenly my mother, watching
her boy, her baby
moving toward the end of the diving board
with her life bound to his feet.
Flight
On the plane to Portland, I sat next to a man
who rocked a book like a child in his lap
for two hours, his palms spread across
the glossed jacket, the unharmed spine.
He never opened it
until we began our fall
through the Oregon fog
and I saw the title about love addiction,
about loving too much or not enough,
his lover pulling him so close it burned
or rolling away to the other side
of the bed, an invisible line marking the space
between their countries.
He was crying, damming his nose with a tissue
and I wanted to touch him, let my arm
fall along his forearm, circle his neck’s pale stem.
It had nothing to do with lust
or a complicated love, but something plain,
my hand resting on the back of his shoulder,
grazing his worn denim shirt.
I spotted him at baggage claim, dragging a leather coat
from his duffel bag, clicking a text
into his cell phone, striding past me toward pickup.
I wanted to tell him it would pass,
that his man would walk away
or he’d finally gather himself,
fold his California life
into a black bag and a carryon
and move to the Northwest,
trailing his grief to an alien city.
I went outside to smoke and saw him one last time,
standing by the damaged curb, the dark waves
of his hair, his five o’clock shadow
washed with salt.
What if we got over ourselves, our journeying
inward, our fear of being turned away?
I swear if I touched him, everything broken in me
would become whole, everything whole
would scatter like seeds.