Poetry

Megan Zawilinkski

The First Thanksgiving

There was no stove in my first apartment,
just mashed potatoes in the microwave,
stuffing in the crockpot,
cranberry sauce on the hotplate.
The breakers tripping whenever all were on at the same time.
My mother carted in the turkey -
lukewarm from the forty-five-minute drive,
it crowded the splintered plywood countertop
as we served ourselves with dollar-store china.
Dinner tasted the same as it always had,
but with a strange, new texture.
Resting in our mouths like concrete.
The radiators kicked on;
the dining room smelled like burning dust.
The walls caked with rotting-pumpkin yellow paint,
the fading sunlight of the evening whispered through ripped blinds.
Gathered as a family of just four for the first time,
the conversation was stilted, words on an ocean.
We struck an uncertain balance,
the wound too heavy to invite into the room.
I said to myself:
This is how it will be, new, forever.

Fourth of July, 2020

All summer I listen to Highway 90,
the vein running past my house
that offers up the only constant reminder of life,
people in the cars hurling past at 60, 70, 80 miles per hour
headed somewhere –
where have they gone?
The first holiday to make me miss holidays,
drinking in my backyard alone
on the same lawn where twelve months before,
friends and family sang old songs and ate sugar sweet watermelon
and the police officer neighbor tossed cans of Busch Light

to his German Shepherd.
The dog, athletic and crazed, leaping to
catch the can out of the air, rolling to the ground
and licking at the punctures.
The friends and family look on,
some in delight, some in horror –
where have they gone?
Eventually I spill onto the overpass,
palms pressed against the chain link fencing.
The sky is finally dark, the warmth lingers.
Hundreds of fireworks displays dot the skies
stretching east and west along that long strip of highway,
each attended by their own crowd of spectators,
faceless beneath the treeline.

Megan Zawilinski is a writer and therapist living in Cleveland, OH. She is currently pursuing an AA in Studio Art at Tri-C Community College.