Is This or Is This True as Happiness
       

When we finally make it, we sit on cold stones.
The river curling over and under our feet
even colder. His secret place.

The air has that early fall smell, things beginning
to rot, the wet soil nourishing itself.
We're trespassing.

Anything could happen
to me in this white ass town. I'm terrified
if he knows that and terrified if he doesn't.

My body is puffy, unremarkable.
I've grown distant and sullen.
A witch told me gin placates the dead.

Whose dead have I been trying to drown
drinking my own elegy?
He asks if I'm happy, and I say yes. See how easy it is

to get here, he says. Yes,
I say. But you have to take me back.

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Copyright © 2021 Derrick Austin All rights reserved
from Tenderness
BOA Editions
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission