Homegoing

And what if dying is like

that time I got out of school early

because I had an appointment

and I pushed open the heavy doors

and walked out into the day

and it was a beautiful spring day

or a late winter day that smelled like spring

and if it was fall it was early fall

when it’s all but technically summer

and there was a whole world going on out there

and it had been going on out there the whole time

that I was stuck inside with time

and teachers and rules and equations and parsed sentences

but now here I was among the tribe

of the free and I could go this way or I could go that way

or I could just sit down right here on this bench

and look around at all the freedom

that was mine and also the work crew’s

breaking for lunch beneath their ladders and also the woman’s

pushing her stroller along the sidewalk and also the man’s

walking his small dog and smoking a cigarette

and it belonged to the cars whooshing by with a sound like

the wind in the trees and the wind in my hair

and the wind all around me and inside me

and also above me chasing the clouds running free

and suddenly there was my mother

looking somehow a little different

in all her freedom and all my freedom

until she rolled down her window and waved

to come--now--hurry

because I had an appointment

which felt like a real buzzkill

and I briefly considered turning around

and walking away from her

and going off on my own somewhere

to be alone and free for a little longer

or maybe for forever

but then I realized there was nowhere for me to go                                                            

except home

Paul Hostovsky’s poems have won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, and have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Writer’s Almanac, and the Best American Poetry blog. Website: paulhostovsky.com

Fondly

I remember my illness fondly

as a time when my illusions

about just about everything

were gently set aside, the way

the nurse’s aide gently set aside my reading glasses

and the book I was trying to read in spite of

the pain–putting them just over there on the table

out of the way of what was more important just then,

which was the undeniable fact

that I needed to be washed. For I hadn’t

washed in several days, married as I was

to the bed, the commode, the drainage tube,

and the pain. Yes, I was married

to the pain, which had a distinct element of monogamy–

it refused to share my attention

with anyone or anything, not even

with other pain. But finally the bed bath

got my attention: the nurse’s aide gently

lifting my hospital gown–an indignity,

a humiliation at first–as I lay there helpless

and pale and naked, the soapy wet

washcloth sliding across my chest and belly

and genitals, my thighs and calves. And when it got to

my feet, taking each of my toes one at a time

with an almost this-little-piggy tenderness,

that’s when my resistance melted away

and in its place an acceptance and a warm gratitude

gripped me so tightly that I couldn’t stop whispering

the little choked thank-yous and bless-yous

escaping like too much air or too much

love from my dry, constricted throat, which was

still sore from the breathing tube. Slippery

though they are, I have tried to hold on to that acceptance

and that gratitude, which came from or were part of

my illness, which I no longer have but remember

fondly, now that I am well.

Paul Hostovsky’s poems have won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, and have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Writer’s Almanac, and the Best American Poetry blog. Website: paulhostovsky.com

Sonder

The builders smoke life into your length – you are a train,

whether you like it or not. In a place and time chosen for you; 

you snake in and out of valleys, vents, varied terrain; 

out of your windows, life events comprise many a view.

And some of them happen to you – life and land conspire

to bring you to a station you only had part of the say getting to.

People come in and out of you, bringing and taking as they desire;

some only bringing, others only taking – they are trains, too. 

Your direction is determined by you, the road, people on board;

with peaks and troughs to enjoy or endure, and unto others do.

Finally you reach your last stop – and, with luck, a reckoning sword?

A peaceful dismemberment, a climactic crash, or a cliff to fly the coup!

This poem was previously published in Coze, a Curtin University student magazine, in 2023

Devahuti Chaliha is just finishing off her Neuroscience PhD, and can't wait to finally learn how to be a normal human. So she's learning how to adult, which now includes lugging along the postdoc extension of her project like a clingy child. Between gleefully experimenting on humans, she loves historical detective novels and logic puzzles. Her occasional escape tactics involve singing, casting, graphic design, charity work, and literally flying away (on a plane). She watches horror movies for a laugh, and is equally merciless towards violators of human rights.