Issue Twenty-Six - Summer 2015

We Are Not Related

By Kristy Webster

We go walking at night naming trees
after relatives who died when we were little
till you name one Johnny Cash which infuriates me
because I thought we were being true and I yell,
You liar! You put out your cigarette
on Johnny’s belly, and I expect
the branches to slap your stupid face.

I stalk you kindly, just a little bit after we break
up and you catch me one night at the bowling
alley, my disguise is a pair of glasses too big
for my face, but you say you could tell
by my posture, you’re not mad you say but, can I
really prove you’re no relation to the Man in Black?

We take up walking again, this time we stick
to the grey, tall buildings, and you tell me:
It’s over still you know, even though your arm
is wrapped around my shoulder and I say,
sure it is, and when we get to the first stop light
I say how I think there should be blue lights too.

One morning I’m driving to the library and
you’re crossing the sidewalk with a new girl
who’s eating string cheese, I can’t believe you
would date a girl like that, you throw up two
digits, and that’s when the buildings fold
over and I hear the pavement moan.

I’ve seen better things than you and still,
I get quiet when I hear someone mention your
name, I think about those trees and the soup
I let sit for days on my counter because it
was the last good thing you ever touched.

Copyright Webster 2015

Kristy Webster is the author of The Gift of an Imaginary Girl: Coco and Other Stories. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific Lutheran University and a Master's in teaching from Heritage University. Her work has appeared in several online journals such as Lunch Ticket, Pithead Chapel, The Feminist Wire, SHARK REEF Literary Magazine, Pacifica Literary Review, Shark Reef Literary Magazine, The Molotov Cocktail, Connotation Press, A Word With You Press and, most recently, in the anthology Two Countries, published by Red Hen Press.

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