Forest of Light

by Jessica Barlevi

Crumbs and dishes still on the table, I knew he was gone. Even as he drifted into the kitchen, his soft flat feet on the wooden planks. Gone. Gone in the sense of a mind vacated. An upstairs room, webby crevices, cardboard boxes already assembled and packed. Gone. Gone in the sense of what I’d held onto for years, his broad back, the shore of his shoulders was slipping away from me, like land detaching into water. I unwrapped his favorite bread from the corner bakery. Sliced it into thick slabs. As I portioned out meat, cheese, tomato, I began to think of what life would be like without him. Imagining this was like entering a forest, light streaming in through an open window. And then I was alone. Soaping the cloth, sponging the counters.

Gravity

by Jessica Barlevi

The yoga instructor places her hands on my sacrum, and I breathe into another country, those steep stone steps, where the lemon trees hung heavy, that year on Amalfi. When you kept buying rounds, making everybody happy. But then you left. And so did stillness. And gravity arrived at my doorstep, showing his bony wrist. Held out a dead rose, a sales slip. Once, I floated over oceans of azure waters, inhaled citrus, rubbed the rinds on my hands, collapsed into all that existed, back when we were dust, when the sun flickered over the ancient beds of shells. Gravity is stiff. He likes things rush, rush. I did what I had to. I learned how to run. And I’m still listening for the signal, the starting gun.

Jessica Barlevi is a writer, whose poetry has appeared in Rattle, The Tusculum Review, and The American Journal of Poetry. She holds a master’s degree from Dartmouth College, where she studied the intricacies of trauma on female Holocaust survivors through their literary texts. A Los Angeles native, Jessica now resides in New Hampshire with her partner, her children, and her two cats—Emily Frost and Roberta Dickinson. Find her on IG at @jessicabarlevi.

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