this is who he was

by Mercedes Hackworth

a boy sitting in serpentine dark 

staring idly at the counter, 

horses in the distance  

running for money, 

kissing beneath  

a small fish in a neon glow.  

what was it that you said 

while the dolphins sat still? 

something about a ride  

that was out of commission.  

and the charred pools see that  

we sank our cherries at midnight and  

made air compromise for 

scandal  

like backwards-sheet-mornings and  

articles decomposing in the dew.  

it all might as well be 

some relic I broke while 

drinking your foul port,  

fracturing onto concrete  

near your friends— 

the blondest  

rejected waltz? 

then we would sit 

in front of televisions and  

contemplate the state line,  

wane for a redneck hermit and 

wax for fortune. 

how long will  

sullen boats wait for  

sounds trapped on hilltops? 

Mercedes Hackworth was born and raised in West Virginia, USA, and completed her bachelor’s degree at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, where she pursued anthropology and Russian studies. She now studies her master’s at the University of Amsterdam, where she hopes to shed her career as an archaeologist in trade for that of a poet. She is 23 years old, disturbed, and lurching toward the complications of the systems placed before all young people who seek romance and pragmatism, simultaneously.