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Polaroids

1 In this photograph you are

  a single parent so 

  never drinking alone.


  You and baby

  each with your bottles tipped back

  grin gaga into the lens.


  Your lover finds you hilarious.

  Your lover finds you worth

  looking after, even if they don’t

  realize how much danger you are in

  or who the threat to you really is.


2 In this photograph, you are

  reacting to the car horn

  ears pick up where eyes did not.

  Steps loose, hips swaying 

  three sheets to the wind.

  The baby is safe 

  with someone else 

  who loves her.

  You are stepping 

  into the passenger side

  of your lover’s car

  having barely crossed the road.


3 In this photograph you are-

  Why did the drunk cross the road?

  In this photograph you are

  laughing at all the jokes.

  You are the joke in this photograph

  only now instead of laughter 

  your lover is angry.

  Drives you to drink, it does,

  all that anger directed in your direction

  when you’re just trying to deflect something 

  that no one can name yet

  because you are a year away 

  from a stage one diagnosis. 


4 In this photograph you are

  only aware of how much your body hurts

  not why it hurts or even where, just all 

  just every all over, just everyplace

  beneath the skin and your skin

  and your hair too.


5 In this photograph you are naked

  but your lover told you never to 

  contact them again, 

  so you can’t ask them to delete it.

  In this photograph you are kissing.

  You can’t ask them anything anymore 

  but you wonder if they remember when the pain started 

  because you can’t remember anything but always

  and you don’t have the receipts 

  for those glowing green bottles of Midori,

  the amber bottles, the peach Bellini.


6 In this photograph you are 

  putting your hand up

  saying stop.




 

Poet Arden Eli Hill
Arden Eli Hill

Despite being from Louisiana, Arden has never wrestled an alligator, only a kangaroo. He is the author of Bloodwater Parish. Arden’s work has appeared in Willow Springs, Western Humanities Review, Tupelo Quarterly Disability Folio, About Place's Strange West's issue, the award-winning anthology First Person Queer, and its sequel. He has work forthcoming from Belfast Pride 2024. In case you are still thinking about the kangaroo, Arden won.

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