Beetles in Purgatory
I wait for my boyfriend outside the bathroom,
as he dresses for the funeral, looming in the hallway
of his parents townhouse, his brother’s dark room open
like the lips of a corpse, the ceiling fan stilled,
clothes stacked on the bed, shapes in the shadows
like a tree line, and I remember two years ago,
when we began dating. At the drive in theater,
we gravitated towards one another, between our friends,
beer bottles glittering at our feet in the dim parking lot,
a crown of white oaks behind the projector erected
to the sky, the way we floated like fish
until our hands grazed between our hips, electricity
on our fingertips, the potential amplifying
before the illuminated screen that we watched
as though it could predict our lives, our figures
backlit in the field of cars.
Finally, he opens the bathroom door, encased
like a beetle in an olive suit, his red beard
over the collar. I always imagined how he would stand
in a suit, but this is not our wedding, and I absorb
his apprehension rising like humidity, the heat under layers
of polyester, his thick fingers straightening the cuffs
of his sleeves, tracing the buttons, fidgeting
over the fabric that he could crawl out of like skin,
his green eyes lifting to me, away from his brother’s
bedroom door, open like a vacuum that could swallow us,
the piles of clothing like the shape of his body
in the bed. His hand finding my own, we descend
the hardwood stairs like a bride to their groom,
the way life marries death, over and over,
his shoulders rising with the giant breaths
he heaves to keep from sobbing, like a woman
in labor. He holds me to his body at the bottom
of the stairs, his shoulders over my body like bow,
bent to the weight of his breaths, the work
of living and dying.
Amanda Leal is a 28-year-old poet from Lake Worth, FL. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in magazines such as White Wall Review, Sky Island Journal, Levee Magazine, West Trade Review, and others.