Kristina Andersson Bicher
Gone
While he was still here, words
sparked from my kneecaps
at night I would write
by their light.
Before he was gone, I drank
elephant tears from
an infinite sea.
When he left I lay my head
on the lush emerald sod of guilt
and my sorrows were leeched
away. Until his absence
became a round
hard pill, white and scored
down its middle. Now loss
lives in a vial by my bedside.
He used to say he hated how
Ritalin sheared away his stray
thoughts, those precious scraps
essential to his face. My
Prozac keeps me breathing.
I store his winter boots in my
coat closet in case somewhere
his feet are cold.
Kristina Andersson Bicher reads “Gone”
Kristina Andersson Bicher is a poet, translator, and essayist. Her work has been published in AGNI, The Atlantic, Ploughshares, Colorado Review, Brooklyn Rail, Harvard Review, Hayden’s Ferry, Plume, Narrative, and others. She is author of the poetry collection She-Giant in the Land of Here-We-Go-Again (MadHat Press 2020) as well as a translation of Swedish poet Marie Lundquist’s I Walk Around Gathering Up My Garden for the Night (Bitter Oleander Press 2020). Her second full-length collection Heat, Sob, Lily is slated for publication in 2025.