LOOSE CHANGE

I wonder if the window knows my forehead.
The glass, familiar like an old lover.

I’ve wasted my life waiting for seasons—
I know the roses and the dogwoods because

I always have time to stop & smell them.
I dated someone who’d usher me away

when I was lost in the fragrance
of spring. Now I’m single

always sniffing flowers. I don’t know
what I’ll do when fall stumbles around.

I should be grateful I lived
to witness another season,

but there’s so much loss
last summer like I’ve walked

around with a hole in my pocket
spilling change on the sidewalk.

MY FATHER AND I WALK INTO A BAR

It’s easy to pretend
he never existed,

every father is a blip,
a dotted “i”

brushed by my right hand
or a sneeze I held in.

No sign of life’s residue,
just chest pain and headache.

One day I’ll live longer
than I ever knew my father

and I won’t know
what to tell my children or a medium.

I’ll be all rotary phone and numb fingers,
sitting in silence with the operator.

I only see my father in my mistakes,
when I black out I know him stumbling home,

when I sob to the bartender about how
I just want someone to like me

I hear my father
asking everyone if they’re his friend—

My life without him
is a sloppy liquor seance.

BIBLICAL ABSENCE

Have I swallowed moths
all summer? If you dissect
my belly, there’d be a busted
porchlight–no bubblegum sky
or Fanta cloud sunset.

I’m familiar with dying
every week, hovering around
some amber glow
until it burns out.
Now there’s no sun

so all I’m left with
are larvae crawling through
my chest like a plague.
If absence was biblical,
burning bushes would be

jukeboxes stuck
on Usher’s U Got it Bad,
but there’s nothing holy
about heartache.

When fall comes
I won’t watch the sky
for a savior. I’ll hang
sweaters and stitch holes.

Airea Johnson is enchanted with the grief process, the idea of significance, and the freewill dilemma. Her writing career started in Saint Augustine, FL. There, she hosted open mics for the Flagler College English Department and was an editor for FLARE: The Flagler Review. She’s now pursuing a writing degree in Portland, OR. She works as an editor for Cathexis Northwest Press. Her poems appear in Third Wednesday Magazine, Oyster River Pages, Lucky Jefferson, and others.