Choked Up Blues

by Aura Martin

          Things have not been going exactly as expected. These silent choices to move, love, or not, ripples in the lactic acid around my heart. Writing it is somehow worse. I had ruined it, of course, by making it about love.
          Some forgotten Bromfield novel says that midwestern hearts are caught between a rough-hewn home and history an ocean away. How best to explain this. It’s an ache in your gut, a cramp in your loin, a lump in your throat. A road trip we never took.
          Does it feel better to be in or out of love? Sometimes I think I can hear your voice at night. There’s a subtle art to splitting yourself in two. When did I fall into this?
          I am wrapped in the silk sheets of this daydream, and I guess this means I miss you or at least the space you occupy. I wish you’d let me say goodbye.
          In some ways, I feel I am back at my beginning. This is going to be the best day in a long row of choked up blues. By this time in our lives we should know that one door opens to another door. You fall into it, don’t you?

 

(In order of appearance, this cento borrows lines from: Claire Scott (“I Need You to Know That,” Issue 15); Lily Klinek (“Microscopy,” Issue 15); Kevin Richard White (“it rained today,” Issue 12); Abby Parcell (“Citing Louis Bromfield in October,” Issue 12); Jacob Nantz (“Learning to Speak,” Issue 15); Dan A. Cardoza (“First Love,” Issue 12); Ryleigh Wann (“When I Say My Depression,” Issue 15); Lily Klinek (“Microscopy,” Issue 15); Paul Edward Costa (“Take a Balloon and Go Sailing,” Issue 12); Lily Klinek (“Microscopy,” Issue 15); Ryleigh Wann (“When I Say My Depression,” Issue 15); Linda Brooks (“cornertable,” Issue 12); Lily Klinek (“Microscopy,” Issue 15); Clara Burghelea (“Ghostification,” Issue 12); Francine Witte (“Why Do You Ask?”, Issue 12); Dan A. Cardoza (“First Love,” Issue 12)).

Aura Martin is a writer from Missouri. She is the author of the chapbook, Those Embroidered Suns (Lazy Adventurer Publishing, 2020) and the micro-chapbook, Thumbprint Lizards (Maverick Duck Press, 2019). Aura’s work has appeared in EX/POST MAGAZINE, Kissing Dynamite Poetry, perhappened mag, and elsewhere. In Aura’s free time, she likes to run, take road trips, and interview writers. Find her on Twitter @instamartin17.

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