In One Version of My Life
I see her, the other me, the other Jessica in her small house in Albuquerque, with bits of colored
glass hanging from a mobile that she had made of broken things; windchimes banging their
obnoxious, constant little prayers; she is just as happy as I am now, walking to check on the
fermenting pickles underneath the counter; she is just as disappointed as I am now, though I can’t
tell you why.
I see her in the garden, hair longer than mine, struggling to keep the compost wet enough to
compost; the fuchsia bougainvillea, she grew it, and it grows to her right, and in this other life, she
reaches and touches it and thinks how much better she would feel, how much more whole, if she
had left, had started over again in New York, and I, in this life, sitting next to fuchsia bougainvillea
blooming its little, white blooms, its incredible leaves grown by someone else, think how much
better I would feel, how much more whole, if I had just stayed where I knew who I was.
glass hanging from a mobile that she had made of broken things; windchimes banging their
obnoxious, constant little prayers; she is just as happy as I am now, walking to check on the
fermenting pickles underneath the counter; she is just as disappointed as I am now, though I can’t
tell you why.
I see her in the garden, hair longer than mine, struggling to keep the compost wet enough to
compost; the fuchsia bougainvillea, she grew it, and it grows to her right, and in this other life, she
reaches and touches it and thinks how much better she would feel, how much more whole, if she
had left, had started over again in New York, and I, in this life, sitting next to fuchsia bougainvillea
blooming its little, white blooms, its incredible leaves grown by someone else, think how much
better I would feel, how much more whole, if I had just stayed where I knew who I was.
Jessica Ankeny‘s poems can be found in Missouri Review, Cincinnati Review, Cream City, and elsewhere. Originally from Albuquerque, she currently lives in Los Angeles with her family and her very cute tortie, Dolores Parton.
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