“Living in Space After a Break-Up” by Jaime Mera

April 30, 2019Posted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, March 2019: Editor’s Choice

 

Floating by Betsy Mars

Image: “Floating” by Betsy Mars. “Living in Space After a Break-Up” was written by Jaime Mera for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, March 2019, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

__________

Jaime Mera

LIVING IN SPACE AFTER A BREAK-UP

She decided to go to space
like deciding to buy Seventh
Generation dish soap at Target.
No phone calls or texts. No
checking her ex’s Facebook
page for his updated status.
She imagined time in space
would pass like an innertube
floating down the river. At first,
the darkness felt like a demon
swallowed and plunged her
into the cavern of its belly.
Later, the darkness swaddled
her like a spider’s silk spun
around its egg sac. She stopped
aching for his touch and that warm
rush that flushed through her
as he kissed her inner thigh.
She discovered that time
collapses and merges together
like a river.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
March 2019, Editor’s Choice

__________

Comment from the editor, Timothy Green: “As Betsy Mars mentioned last week, there was an especially wide range of interesting poems submitted for the challenge in March—and a near-record 395 submissions total. Jaime Mera grabbed me right away with the surprising humor in the first three lines before plunging into incredibly nuanced metaphor of at the heart of the poem. I love how the breakup and life in space, too, merge like that river, so that I almost forget which is a metaphor for which.”

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