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Nixi Schroeder: a poem



love at the end of the world, part 2

there's a promise in the space

between your breath and mine;

an intimacy of mist, sheltered

from the fingers of wind and rain

there's a promise in the sidewalk cracks, oily

and 1 AMed, pebbled with slug trails

and smushed shots, the aching histories

which burlesque street lights into atmospheres,

light touches into galaxies, the wet spot in my hair

(water or bird shit?) into your eyes

against my cheek, the leaf there on your leg

into a terror of commitment like the cat

that stalks us with its unlucky hunger

you offer to shatter the windows

of a dead school,

half-rotten walnut tight in your

brown fingers;

when i laugh you

walk me home instead

and wait til i'm inside

without appearing to be waiting

scientists say that in thirteen years

the world will be broken beyond repair

but in this pregnant dark

the thought of your refusal

to break anything

is like a kite string

threading leaves

to where you're standing

underneath the stars



Nixi Schroeder is a writer and slam poet based out of Saint Louis Missouri. Her work has appeared in The Fem, The Sad Girl Review, Duck Lake, Blue Heron, Poetic Medicine, and other publications. When not writing, she teaches English.

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