Meghan Sterling

Something Else Entirely

How I swam in the heat that became frost,
everyone always in the next room, mother

playing solitaire at the table, father lying on
the couch, a cloth under his head to catch the oil.

How play became parallel. Then we all forgot
what play even was. How we waited by the door back

when father could walk. We would jump out at him.
O, the joy of waiting, of father’s feigned terror. How

I read once that the Earth will be swallowed by the sun
in 7.5 billion years. That the seas will boil in one billion.

Outside, the sirens. Yellow howls of the neighbor’s dogs.
How I’ll be gone in 40. Maybe 50. The relief at how long gone

I’ll be when it all comes down. How I think of my daughter.
Her radiant eyes. Blue as a fountain full of coins. How many pools

I want to swim in with her. Flexing a body that can still move.
Twelve more summers. Letting the heat singe us golden.

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Meghan Sterling (she/her/hers) is a bi/queer Jewish writer whose work is published in Los Angeles Review, Colorado Review, Rhino Poetry, Hunger Mountain and many journals. Self-Portrait with Ghosts of the Diaspora (Harbor Editions), Comfort the Mourners (Everybody Press) and View from a Borrowed Field (Lily Poetry Review’s Paul Nemser Book Prize) came out in 2023. Her next collection, You Are Here to Break Apart (Lily Poetry Review Press), is forthcoming in 2025. Read her work at meghansterling.com.