What I Remember Most About the Union Dairy
The brightly glowing letters of UNION DAIRY FARMS,
a luminous neon declaration to the world. Weeds
sprouting from paint-chipped curbs that whispered
of better times, a dying city in late August.
We didn’t acknowledge it – the way summer
had slipped away from us, the future uncertain.
Inside, the buzz of seasonal workers in matching
t-shirts, blonde ponytails swinging over their
shoulders. Ice cream flavors with names like coconut
explosion, chocolate cherry overload, peanut butter
swirl. How we felt so perfect when we were kissing
on sidewalks, when we were running on borrowed
time. How everything became cursed after I moved
home. Aware, sick with it, that something crucial
had changed between us and would stay changed.
Containers full of hot fudge and caramel, honeyed
pecans and sliced almonds, maraschino cherries
soaked in their sweet syrup. Fresh slices
of pineapple and strawberries, cookie
crumbles and mini marshmallows, glistening
mounds of whipped cream. It was a sad ending, a sore
bruise to press, the moment at the end of sunset
when the light has all but slithered over
the horizon, and everyone becomes
a black silhouette against fading purple light.
Still, I remember: the smell of your jacket –
warm from your body – draped across
my shoulders as I watched a gummy worm
casually slip into the black hole of your mouth, that
beautiful weapon, that cause of death.
How We Got Lost in the Woods Around Homer Lake
How we set off along the west trail – insects buzzing, mid-April
sun beating down our necks. Yellow coneflowers,
honeysuckle, asters waved listlessly in the stifling breeze.
You were slow and bloated from months of day-drinking.
How I was disgusted by you, how you resented me for it.
Next summer, you said, we could buy a kayak and
go fishing here. As if you weren’t planning to leave me
by New Year’s Eve, as if we didn’t already hate each other.
Goldenrods swollen with insect galls, tickseed, false nettle
caught on our clothes. Several miles of gravel and dirt,
and you couldn’t think of anything else to say.
How sometimes we held hands in a grisly imitation of
how we began, how other times on the path I couldn’t
stand to touch your clammy palm. Somewhere
we took a wrong turn on the southeast end of the lake.
How long did we not notice?
Oranges, reds licked across the sky. We stumbled
through the prairie grasses and the bloodstained sun spilled
into the clouds and soaked our skin. How we shivered
as the air went cold, as the sky turned mottled purple
like a bruise. How we circled the lake, over and over.
How we couldn't figure out how to leave.
Isabelle Ylo resides in the suburbs of Chicago. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Beloit Poetry Journal, Emerge Literary Journal, Rappahannock Review, Salt Hill Journal, and more.
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