If We Weren't in Cleveland
by Julieanne Larick
The open window gapes
letting in little white petals to my room,
tan pigeons hopping,
apartment leaking in rosy air,
but I miss you more.
The golf course is right outside my window and
I can hear people talking from all the way up here.
Part of me wants to be them.
Part of me wants to be a bowing oak,
rustling green leaves in the wind
and balding sticks in the winter,
but only if you were the sturdy bark,
or the pollen-caked wind,
or a even blinding cloud that floated miles above,
swimming through the earth,
drifting past my peak if only once.
Sometimes after I shower,
I open a window
and stick my nose against the screen,
pretending the washes of air are water
and that I do not live in Cleveland,
but rather a misty eerie forest in Norway,
or a twist of ocean spray in Greece.
Somewhere where golf courses don’t exist,
only us in the heart of a sunbeam
lazing in its shore and hearing its mellow breath.
So when I open the window to see a vacant garden
sitting idly above the grass plains
from my castle in the sky,
May thundering itself to Cleveland,
I feel a twinge of blue
knowing you aren’t here.
Do You Have a Plan?
by Julieanne Larick
Do you have a plan?
I know you’ve been
silent
in a white plastic cell for seven days,
but can you tell us what you’ll do?
Yes, we understand your life is
ours to mold and
the girl that’s been here a month
just puked up breakfast on her socks
and no, we don’t care about
the drugged-up rambling that sent you here
in an ambulance
talking to the EMT who told you
about how he learned
Spanish last year in college,
he made you feel okay;
this was the first time you haven’t
felt like a shredded poem
bleeding words to death.
Can you tell us what your plan is?
After the lady with a face of oil
that dripped onto an open
pad of parchment
drop by drop
told you to shut up and take your pill,
and to play with the other kids like
you weren’t fifteen and
writing letters to your boyfriend that
the kids grabbed and read aloud;
cathartic and loving, sorrowful words
devouring your flesh and
exposing your screaming
red veins
in the process.
What’s your plan?
No, you can’t go outside
after you leave the cell,
lest you climb a tree and
the branch breaks,
they would blame us.
When your 11-year-old roommate
kept your eyes burning open all night
fearful she would wrap her hands
around your neck and squeeze
and like you weren’t staring into the blank
static white noise of a room hours for a day.
Yes, you can hold your own mouth
open by the teeth,
we don’t care if they rip out in the process,
and let us know all your secrets and
let go all your dignity because yes,
we know what’s best for you
and didn’t you buy those pills months ago?
So how would you know
what your plan is?
About the Author
Julie Larick is a freshman at the College of Wooster majoring in English and Spanish. She edits for the Incandescent Review and mentored at their summer studio. Her work has been featured in the Incandescent Review and Lake Erie Ink’s teen anthology. Julie is an alum of Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, ArtWorks, and Pen Ohio. She loves sewing, thrifting, and cats!