Tim BiddickSomething I have learned in the past year
is that there are broken Heineken bottles on the crest
of every boulder in New England.
In Lakeville, in Jamaica Plain, in the New Hampshire places
I’m not sure have names yet, there are shards
of green glass beating back the sun like emeralds.
Something I have learned in the past year
is that every gem in New England is false.
From the top of every rock, there is a dull but full view
and when you look around you will understand
that this is how Lost Boys find out where they come from:
by smashing green bottles against hard rock
and leaving their tiny ghosts to the rattling wind.
It is hard for me to feel here, in places
where I was not placed,
planted where I did not grow.
The view reminds me
that always right behind you
there is a clean sense of disappearing.
In New England, there is no scuttle away,
no shake of leaves. There is no flip or pop,
no trick to the vanishing,
just clean, cold ether
and exhale. In New England all you can hope to leave
is an empty bed and billowing curtains.
New England fucks its prey with winter
and leaves through a window that it refuses to close behind itself.
The only way out of New England is through that open window,
towards a neverland that you can never visit for a second time.
I do not know why I am allowing
the youngest parts of me to die in New England.
I do not know why my tiny ghost wants to haunt a place
so far from its home. I only know
that New England is where we Lost Boys go
once our bodies fool us into growing older.
New England does not tire of the flesh that it lures,
does not play with its food or care enough to chew:
it can only swallow whole
but perhaps this is all that I want from New England:
to be eaten by boulders, to vanish
without anybody noticing.
There is no trick,
just clean ether / exhale / breathe / rattle / break.
It is hard, but I am learning how to break
and how to belong
in the cleanest possible way, like the bottles,
their glowing shards shining like the second star to the right
and placed in the muddy footprints of wandering Lost Boys;
each of us learning how to breathe
and how to disappear
for a second time.
Tim Biddick is a sophomore WLP major from Seattle, Washington. He’s usually off somewhere thinking about Game of Thrones or stealing a pen from somebody. His favorite is the Pilot G-2. He’s pretty sure that ghosts are real and that a.) there is one in his dorm room and b.) he is the ghost.