To Where Everything Looked Lovely

It was his breath, bile
and beer soaked
tongue made me
turn a cheek. His
knuckles spun
me in a globe,
greens and blues,
star glitter falling
on the swell.

His face molten, words
jabbed me. Ducking, hiding,
a dance memorized
in childhood. The spitting
dagger halved me,
he dug out the bulb,
buried it
in fertile soil.

A scratch and pop,
nails grasping for a doorknob,
the release of a latch,
clicked closed by his grasp,
like running into storm
wind, blowing you back,
ripping hair.

Tresses trailed
three states away
to where everything
looked lovely.
The cigarette
butt, soul seeping, gun
cocked, NYC.

By Elizabeth York Dickinson

Biography:

Elizabeth York Dickinson received her MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. She has work published or forthcoming in Eunoia Review, Drunk Monkeys, Picaroon Poetry and Riggwelter among others. She currently resides in Evanston, Illinois.