CHRISTOPHER R. VAUGHAN

Notes to "The Table"       

 

I, too, have raised my voice
against my children 

when they are only
two, only too 

young and— Maybe
the way you prove 

your loving to yourself
is to withhold it 

from another
for a moment and 

know—shame is a gift:
that instant sword- 

plunge of regret
deep in the sternum.

 

 

After I Drive to the Place I Go
When I've Mispoken                             

 

Sunrise candles over the range, my windshield
filmed grey from the overnight—those trees'

long sloughing-off, the skin of a world
with so much to discard. I stare at a cloudscape 

in time-lapse, how it rears up, slivers
to cirrus, refolds back into scowl. Last night 

I drove here the way I imagined others might:
reeling and overtorqued, bending each turn 

as if the asphalt were a heart my tires could etch
and burn. I shook, the motor shook, I parked 

in a wooded lot by a drive-in theater
that played myself on loop—a silent movie 

I over-voiced all night, sun puddling away, the dark
rending a shape of me from the skin's 

contour lines inward. Now I'm gone. Nobody,
nobody gets in or out. I’ve locked 

the doors from the inside.

 

 

         

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