By Crystal Ignatowski
"Twenty-Twenty uses a phrase from Hala Alyan’s poem, September, a week in."
It’s the first days of the decade and I shouldn’t be left alone. I am strange and foreign in my body. Driving home from the party, the freeway feels longer and the city buildings seem taller. We keep building everything higher, but we aren’t any closer to God than when we’re on a bathroom floor weeping about our lives. M pulls on a cigarette and I ask for a drag even though I haven’t had one in four years and suddenly I’m eighteen again and making poor choices. Some of us are born with chaos tugging at us like a kite is tugged by the wind: the more you pull on the string, the higher it climbs. And this is how I found myself in his bed and this is how I found myself with his tongue in my mouth and this is how I found myself ten cigarettes in and, and. At some point, everyone wishes they could be a new version of themselves, mine just comes every day. I dream of old men and new men and old friends and new friends. I dream of drinking again. My lies sustain me in the dark. I am unable to be straight like a needle. It’s the first days of the decade and the sun starts to rise over neon electric signs because no one ever tells the sun not to rise. I send M an envelope with this poem inside. I am curled next to him in another life. We keep moving because we have no choice.
Crystal Ignatowski's poetry has been featured in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Four Way Review, Honey and Lime Literature, Flypaper Magazine, and more. She lives and writes in Oregon.