Julia Watson

The Playlist Reaches At the Bottom of Everything

1.

Take me back to the car, lift me onto the hood. Listen          to paint creak.
            The deer are done watching. They are crepuscular,
catatonic at this hour. I slept but did not
dream. As you twined us through the trees. Up the mountain, Dahlonega
                        is reticent. Its stars: dry eyes staring down.

2.

There is a portrait
                        you’ve shredded every night. I don’t ask you
what she’s done, or why, like riptide, you recede
            in morning to repair your hurt. Here, the pencils
are snapped and mended with painter’s tape. Here, the oils

spill only from her lip. I’ve listened to the way you talk
            to her, how you beg her for reprise. Come to bed, I say,
it’s three am and nothing good will come of this. Then, stillness
of late morning. I bring you coffee. Your eyes fix slightly above the rim.

I step over the scraps
            of face, stucco on the floor.

3.

On the highway, we build a city
            underwater. The bus floats by easy. Traffic’s unwedged. People drift
on highway signs, paddling light poles.

We listen to the same album backwards. We sink to deeper waters—
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, oh god, I’m sorry—

4.

We’re apex. Apogee. Washed up in Auraria.
            I don’t need sincerity. I need you
                        to touch me. Rekindle my face in the make
            of a ghost town. A scuffle town. No one
but the deer can hear the ending. Its ending,

            the song. Now rip me open
one last time and we’ll float. I swear.

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Julia Watson earned her MFA in Poetry from North Carolina State University. She was a finalist for the 2021 NC State Poetry Contest, the 2021 Joy Bale Boone Poetry Prize and won the Sassaman Award for Outstanding Creative Writing from Florida State University. Her works have been published in Panoply: a literary zine, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Hysterical Rag and other journals. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina where she plays bass guitar in the band Cardinal Lake. You can read more of her work at juliawatsonwriter.com.