I held up a man stronger than myself & carried both of us to a strange river forked in a hidden forest / he called out my name while looking past my face & into the black satin sky that stretched from behind the trees / neither of us hailed from that sapphire moon we learned to call home / I’ll never know if he was looking for a particular star to cry out to or if it was my face he refused to see / before us were plants undiscovered until after our redressing our boots & suits crunched & covered their lavender shoots & reeds / Ruby was my mother’s name until I took it & wore it like the rhinestone broach my sisters refused / I built myself in her image: her elaborate jheri curl her tight gowns her refusal of anything waxing or waning away from perfect & men & women who are lucky can keep our name in their mouths at least until sunrise / I never caught that strong man’s name I never ask the right questions when the camera is packed away / we held each other like wild trees growing too close together / he said my name again & for the first time I found myself thinking in silence / Ruby / he called out out & I finally realized how lost I really was / chasing strange men around even stranger forests while never catching anything not even their name / only knowing they will call out for Ruby & I will return.
RJ Equality Ingram works as a used bookseller for Goodwill Industries of the Collumbia Willamette. Their first collection of poetry The Autobiography of Nancy Drew is forthcoming from White Stag Publishing in early 2024. RJ received their MFA in creative writing from Saint Mary’s College of California with concentrations in poetry & creative nonfiction. More work can be found in Phoebe Journal, Miniskirt Magazine & Citron Review among others. RJ’s cat Brenda lost a leg designing her memory palace.