Sarah Carson

I Wanted to Tell You I Climbed the Water Tower to Bring This Poem Back Down with Me

Down to earth from the gray haze
we once blamed on a factory, 

down from the sky
into my scar-pocked hands, 

these raised-river maps
of skin on bone on brick. 

I wanted to tell you
I climbed the rust-peeled rungs 

where other girls’ sneakers
followed their wanting above the city, 

so I could look east to the trailer park
where my sister and I once rode bikes 

someone’s landlord left at the roadside,
so I could look west to the land 

my grandparents tried to sow,
tried to turn over, 

collecting little more than
charcoal ash like feathers— 

time itself drifting away
as they walked. 

I wanted to tell you
I climbed the water tower 

to see for myself—
how every life is full 

of days you’d cut from the timeline
if you thought you could 

revise what’s already happened—
as if to be from somewhere 

is to forever move in its opposite direction,
to tear open a knuckle, 

to skin a cheekbone
is the way one calls forth macrophages, 

like a matchhead starts a burn
that has not planned its end. 

But I did not climb the water tower.
Even on the days I’ve been most here, 

my feet planted firmly on the red brick streets
my parents floated drunk on the draught beer 

bought with their billiards winnings,
I’ve spent my life dreaming of other places. 

And one does not get to start over
if she refuses to be torn open, 

to climb high enough to fall to pieces,
to be rearranged.

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Sarah Carson is the author of poems, short stories and essays that have appeared in such places as Brevity, Guernica, Missouri Review and Diagram, as well as the full-length poetry collection, How to Baptize a Child in Flint, Michigan (Persea Books). You can read more of her work at stuffsarahwrote.com.