tuesday afternoon thoughts on the void

by Megan Busbice

morose the melt, the measure

of this. ambivalent, bright

with the inrush of belated spring.

smear of the temporal, starbursts

behind the eyes, maybe this is

what they call the void, someone

says to me.

all the color gone to rust, dusty air

making grit of breath. silences

pushed and pulled like the breeze,

police recruitment billboards and

fake plants. self-immolation is

in style, apparently. maybe this

is the void, I say in return.

here comes the fever, the flush.

the heavy slow breath of the season.

I’m trying to remember the last time

spring didn’t feel like doomsday –

I remember when I used to dress

in pastels and speak of resurrection.

this is the void into which we all

pour our becomings, I say, gesturing

generally without any sense of direction.

the irrelevance of innocence in

the all-war era. as the april flowers

bloom and we pick them for

gravesites. I make microwaveable

meals; I take the rideshare home.

I feel the sun eating up my skin –

I have always been told that I am

prone to these benign sorts of death.

perhaps it is a privilege. the void

can be a good thing, someone says to

me, insistent. the sun burns. so does

the spring.

Megan Busbice is a poet, fiction writer, and a current J.D. Candidate at the University of California, Berkeley. Her legal work is focused on public interest issues, specifically social justice and civil rights. Megan received her undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and was subsequently a Fulbright grant recipient in Madrid, Spain.