Noralee Zwick

ode to lucy dacus & whatever is in the streetlights

there isn’t anything I’ve found quite yet; I have been cramming myself into
               787 square feet of footprints & writing my mother postcards & they all read

like prayers, blessings for the echoes & every streetlight polluting slippery
               narrow alleyways & the wilting post-show hydrangea cast off into a

stranger’s waiting hands & this is nothing to photograph flash on, not when
               back home every breath I took was my own, not when every time my eyes close

I am bareback on a dirt road picking out the planes from meteors & fighting
               time right there in the garage & he is picking up my childhood bike with

the flat tires & the crimson basket & throwing each gear at me &
               asking me where are you going. where is it you think you’re going to go

except I am half a world away & there is no space for a bicycle in my apartment
               & I’ll admit that my mother was right, there is no city that can love me back, but

it was worth it to try to find one; & mama there is only so much I can be; one of these
               days I’ll grow weary of losing & of drum sets & of stupid philosophical musings

& I’ll drive back to the old house with the picket fence & the peeling
               yellow paint & listen to grandma talk about the inevitability of peace

from her armchair in the living room & I’ll stare at the divots framing her hands
               when she washes dinner dishes in the sink & I’m a poor historian if I write

my way right back to LA & endlessly keep sketching home & I’ll come back but
               I won’t have it in me to stay & I guess one of these days I’ll have it all figured out