by Sophie Crocker
you wade through the oilfields in a too-dark dark.
in your hands mine would disappear. i have been
wearing all your blazers. a girl
in a movie.
you said & said i will be with you always.
when you would push my head down i felt a buoyancy.
i don’t know what can be waded in. muck
sugar gold? remember
when you began to wear suits. like a child
putting a silk tie around my wrists. in that version you love me forever.
in that version sunday mornings, road trips, dust storms, illness. in that
version lamps without oil. but that’s a different kind of oil. but isn’t it
the same? the sapping stuff, that corporate horror? light from appetite?
these two things,
unhaveable at once: the greed & the girl.
hanging on the wall
of the room we won’t own
dried lavender. or any creature that sleeps upside down.
sometimes in this version, even—but it’s not
a real forever. oh sunday nights too, & new years. hot springs, hands
under sheets,
blood moons,
malarkey.
oh every girl
is a girl in a movie. maybe. every boy
is a sideshow
to hope. they want want want & then stay still.
later, i wander the oilfields too. sobbing or
sticky. i wish you to thumb
my mouth clean. oh i’m blushing i’m blushing oh i’m gonna
blush. sometimes
i’m all limbs & you’re all gone.
what did you think
we would find in the dark. did you think any innards
could be accessed by drill? any bone?
you’re right. i unwait for you,
stripped, screwlike. i had access-points, before. the nape
of the neck, between the braids—
my lips, when wet—instead, instead
the quicks of my nails
the blackened lungs
the oilwells. you bleed me empty as desire.
you’re a bastard, a betrayer, i mean: you tell me
i can have everything. & then you make yourself into everything.
then frack the earth, saying, why are you crying! my world,
why are you crying!
all your fuel sluicing from my eyes!
i hang lavender
in my unusable mouth.
but when i am emptied i am still magnetic.
i am a lighthouse unreturnable to.
when i burn i smother light.
SOPHIE CROCKER (they/she) is a writer and performance artist based on unceded Songhees, Esquimalt, and W̱SÁNEĆ land. She is a reader for Palette Poetry, and currently works as a copyeditor. Her previous and forthcoming publications include The Fiddlehead, The Common, CV2, The Malahat Review, The Nashville Review, Plenitude, Homology Lit, and Room Magazine.
The Oil Baron's Wife can be found in Augur Magazine Issue 4.1.
