by Joshua Zeitler
Puberty
and cars and trucks
obviously and trains
from time to time
he heard coming
but never saw
loving the rush
of air how he could
feel it so close
how the Doppler
effect made danger
alive and cool sweaty
bottles of beer
when he was nine
how he could see
a world his friends couldn’t
but not the edge
of the table
that broke his fall
and his jaw and the silence
and the silence most of all
and the years passing
like raucous trains and love
trite to even mention it
but here we are
and its leaving too
he told me
and the needle
of the tattoo gun
again and again and
the eviction
he should have known
was coming and the cruelty
of children he never forgot
and Columbine and 9/11 and
the Mormon missionaries
who called the ambulance
and the conversion and the sobriety
of weighing kindness against belief
and relapse and relapse and
getting addicted to
recovery the rush
of revelation and its
leaving too and the smoke
from wildfires a country over
turning the half-moon
orange I can’t picture it
he said to me dropping his
haloperidol
in the little dixie cup of water
they gave him and downing it
like a shot
I just know it’s not right
and it scares me
wanting to change
for good this time.
Joshua Zeitler is a queer, nonbinary writer based in rural Michigan. They received their MFA from Alma College, and their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Foglifter, Harpur Palate, The Account, and elsewhere. They are the author of the chapbook Bliss Road (Seven Kitchens Press, 2025).
Hawaii Pacific Review 