My Neighbor’s Table

was there the night when wife
took the pistol which had been pressed
to her temples again and again
and turned it against husband.
It was there for the bang, for his slump,
for the clatter of fork to floor.
Now, the table stands
in my living room,
brought over by my father.
It’s a great table, he says.
Solid foundation. Expensive.
How many times, before that night,
had this wood held my neighbor’s arms,
his hands scabbed and swollen
and fresh with her blood?
How long did it cradle her elbows,
as she cradled her head,
deciding that shackles and bars
would be a better life than this one?
I search the table for signs,
chips, scratches, a drop of blood missed,
while the voices across the street
drift through the window.
She’ll get life. There’s no next of kin.
Neighbors are taking what they can
before the state takes the rest.
A man struts out the front door
holding a leather jacket and a blue vase,
a dollar store grab or a family heirloom,
who knows? The conversations trickle
like our local river over skipping stones,
what to wear and say and bake
when someone new buys the house.
As soon as tomorrow, families will be here,
townies looking to expand,
farmers looking for a way back,
kids and dogs and tight-lipped wives
listening to husbands remark good bones.
And it is the river, isn’t it, and we it’s people,
always moving, always leaving
what we don't want to carry behind.
No one says her name. Maybe
the wood has already forgotten,
the shouts and cries sliding off
the seamless deep-maple gloss
my reflection pools in. I look small.
It’ll be great for starting to get out
on your own, my father adds,
once you get a little older.
I suppose he is right. I suppose by then
I’ll know how to forget.

Sisterhood, Crayfish

I know how long a crayfish can survive out of water. I know how to pinch one just behind its small arms so I can pass it off to you without it snapping at your fingers. I know you’ll sink into the muck in your hand-me-down waders. I know if we find a real big one, you’ll jump right out of those stuck boots and splash over to me, grinning, blonde ponytails bouncing like the cattails on the shore. I know you still don’t notice the way the other river goers look at me. I know that when we’ve caught and freed enough, and the sun and river have started to lull you, I’ll have to pull you onto my back and wade us both to shore, you already dozing against my sweat-plastered old t-shirt.

I don’t know what to tell you when you start to grow up and ask me about the names fishermen hurl at me when they see my short hair and boy shorts as I wade into the shallows. I don’t know how to explain why I don’t take my dates to the shore until after I am sure the last boat has docked, and even then, only if it's dark. I don’t know what to say when you ask if you can bring girls home, too. I don’t know what to do when you tell me this river muck town can’t be our home forever. I don't know how long we can go without being in the water.

I will learn for you. I will learn to wade through city after city, searching. I will learn to spot those secret places where girls kiss girls under street lights and the passing cars just keep driving. I will learn where to pinch the world so I can hand you a home that won't hurt you. I know I can learn. I have to.

Eulogy with River Song, Creek Song

I heard about his murder
while sitting in the desk
he used in our psych class
last year.

Three guys he called friends
cornered him, knives raised,
for the crime of being a boy
who kissed boys.

Days later, a friend called me,
needing air but afraid to be alone
because she kissed a girl
in the locker room once

and now she wasn’t sure no one saw.
We met in the dark at the dock
on the intersection of the river and creek,
that place where water kisses water,

and just listened
to that sound, that rush over silt,
that embrace of similar bodies.
That song was sung here

long before town existed,
and it will still be here
when the last dock rusts to bits
and the last tackle shop is boarded up,

when the last queer kid
pries their roots from the muck
and makes it out of this place
alive.

There is a comfort in the sound,
that kiss, but there is no relief.
I wish it was him singing.
I wish the swells of the water

were his chest, still rising and falling.
I wish the sun would never rise
over the town
without him in it.  





Cayla Garman is a small-town-Pennsylvania-based writer and a graduate of Penn State Harrisburg. Her work can be found in or is forthcoming at One Art, The Shore, The Milk House, and From the Fallout Shelter.