Mia Sara is an actress and poet living in Los Angeles. Her work has been published in Cultural Weekly, The Kit Kat Review, Forge, The Dirty Napkin, and others. For more please visit: wheretofindmiasara.tumblr.com
*****
Unlucky Charms
Yesterday, because it was drizzling
I put on my oiled canvas coat.
It’s green with a tartan lining, and still
smells as rancid as the day I bought it in
Scotland, at a shop that sold guns
and tackle, and woolen caps
to keep the head warm. It has pockets
deep enough to hold a brace of pheasant.
I was almost out the door
to rush my daughter to kindergarten,
when my sister called, needing money.
The kids. The rent. The husband.
I dropped the check in the mailbox on my
way to the car.
Later, standing at the back of the kid-colored room,
watching them sing in a circle,
fighting the urge to duck and run,
I shoved my hands into the pockets of
my green coat, finding the Scottish
coins I never got rid of,
and remembered a time when
I made myself so unhappy
that I was freed from the grasping of others.
Safe in drab misery, inconspicuous,
thumbing my nose at the jealous gods,
the frost in August, the bitter bed.
But I have never hidden for long.
They always sniff me out,
run me to ground,
open their dripping jaws to claim their share.
I watched my own beautiful girl,
her nest of honey curls,
her mouth wide in song, pitch perfect,
and I gripped my heavy coins,
hard in my palm.
Unlucky charms against
my too lucky life.
***
The Go Between
I saw his face,
and there lost sight,
of any bridge before,
or the cool shallow bliss
of a world without loss.
It turns out, I was never alone by the fire,
and what’s between us,
swallows me whole
and spits me out
where the world began.
To see him crouching
on the lip of the night,
tracing constellations with
his outstretched hand;
I give up all my questions,
to answer his.
I have stitched his first secret
to the hem of my skirt.
I say, “All in good time.”
But his time is still sweet,
while mine is all wasted,
sitting on my hands.
I say, “Work the blue chord
until the page bleeds the horizon,”
foaming at the mouth.
Who can teach how
to draw a conclusion?
I say, “There never was
the original sin,
only the original song.”
And if I know the words,
why am I humming?
If my life spins, on the hinge
of his dreams, (cracking wise,
dumb-founded)
what do I mean when
I say “Never enough love?”
One son, one sky,
one shadow, yearning.
The first seen, the first unseen;
I am just his go-between
this life, and the next.
In it for the kicks,
and the one true glance;
the giddy oasis
of his sleeping cheek.
Needed, not wanted,
the readiest fool.
The last one standing
in the path of the juggernaut.
If child is the father of man,
What is the mother?
And who do I think I am,
when he turns his back
and walks away from me?
