
Asha Dore
Twelfth Night
Elizabeth Hickson
Easy, he needed to cut
the extra shadow
from your heart, an area
on the scan edged in gray.
The first night home
your body dripped
dark water.
On the second day
our father
turned your Oxy
into milk, white liquid
he poured down the sink.
Each morning I emptied
your tubes, longed
to leak from my body
your body’s rain.
Instead, I read
the part where Antonio
tells Viola that twins
are like an apple
cleaved in half.
They cut me in half,
you said, letting me
trace a finger
down the metal’s edge.
Rare are things that
do not have clear boundaries—
the blackberry stain
of dusk in Ohio
the border between us
always getting confused.
Remember our game?
Someone would pinch your elbow
& I’d search my body
to find your hurt.
This, too, is how pain travels,
sound through a shared wall
white surge, blind breath.
all things fast & not incredibly violent
of my body
the ampersand curls &
the sky
drunk
is closing in again.
it is a fact
that in the wrong set of circumstances,
we can all be who we used to be.
we can skin the animal. somewhere
there is a windowless room, an incoming text
a dead phone & no stars. dusk
drips honey again
& I know a girl
whose father killed himself.
boom. on a park bench at lunch.
please,
let me begin again.
that was inconsiderate.
I am stepping naked from someone else’s shower.
I am not who I said was.
ii.
what I remember
is moonshine,
the spill
of his voice asking
if he could drive me home.
please
I say to a different man in a different room
that was skins ago.
excuse me, I am trying to remember the suddenness.
I am trying to separate slivers of light.
I’ll only be another minute.
I want to see a map of the whole sky in miniature.
I want you to look at me while I look at it.

Elizabeth Hickson is a graduate of Brooklyn College, where she earned her MFA in Poetry. She is also a graduate of Wake Forest University, where she earned a B.A. in English Literature and received the D.A. Brown Award for Excellence in Creative Writing. Originally from Ohio, she currently lives in North Carolina.