Susan C. Waters
In a parallel universe
we would be fine.
Yes, my music would suffer
with a dominant left hand
but your quick anger
would be anointing tenderness
and my furious tantrums,
sweet submission,
seductive as sleep
and all else that cradles us.
Then again, the twinges I feel
–shadows in the dark woods—
would not be stirring
like a hibernating animal
in its slow ascent toward spring.
Instead, I would be nearing blind hate,
used to the cold asleep.
No, I would be crossing
the Einstein-Rosem Bridge,
the universe’s black hole,
that journeys to the other
version of you, of me.
Or, if I could not find that bridge,
lost in the birthplace of comets
or drawn in by dark stars,
I would tear the fabric of space,
with both hands to reach you.
Susan C. Waters is a graduate of the writing program at George Mason University. Currently, she is Professor of English at New Mexico Junior College and has been so for nearly 15 years, teaching composition and literature survey courses, additionally, world literature and a class on the Wild West. She started out as a journalist covering hard news in upstate New York and for 13 years was a magazine editor and writer at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, College of William and Mary. Her publishing credits are extensive, ranging from the Washington Post and the Baltimore Sun to the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and the U.S. House of Representatives. She has won seven prizes in poetry, including the Mary Roberts Reinhart Prize at George Mason University, and she has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize in Poetry. Heat Lightning, a chapbook, was published in December of 2017.