The point of suffering
Rush Limbaugh is in hell on an eternal
stationary bike. Stalin is stuck
in a hedgemaze and your ex
is repenting. Is this what you want?
More suffering?
On a patio with Rosy,
I’m sipping a shitty Tom Collins
in 90-degree heat. We’re talking
about science fiction
& whether closure exists.
I remember what he told me
on our last-ever phone call:
You’re just mad I haven’t fucked you yet,
& the anger that powered my days,
how drowned I was in murky lakewater then,
sure that suffering had a purpose.
Tomorrow, he is going to wake
& experience joy &—truly,
I realize, with relief—I feel nothing. Evil
men will die while I’m eating
the best French fry of my life,
resplendent in a cold shower,
licking sweat off Heather’s upper lip.
There’s no prize. A moth throwing its body
against the light.
~
Father John Misty on Chuckanut Drive
I could have died there on that strip of shoreline,
rocks learning to become sand and crows
screaming, swooped so low we wondered
if it was play or fight. hard to tell sometimes.
my skin absorbed the northwest sun
as a reservoir, as a jar screwed tight
with seawater, gold rush particles
and curled, toxic oysters. the tide inched in.
barely perceptible. I am different now
than when he and I lay here, and he drained
my life force and I thought
it was love. or the price of love.
this time, on the winding road, I played
his favorite songs I’d shunned for years
now blasting through my rental car, quivering
against the canopy. There are things I get to keep.
I’m ebbing toward some unknown
force, (thank god), alone.
Hanna Webster is the author of I’m So Glad I Stuck Around for This (Finishing Line Press, 2027) and an award-winning journalist. Her work and art have appeared in Bellingham Review, Stonecoast Review, HAD, Ocean State Review, Epiphany, Hayden’s Ferry Review, ONE ART, BRUISER Mag, and elsewhere. Webster is also the poetry editor of The Science Writer. She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
