To the Woman Whose Poem Spent the Night in My Brain

I had my coffee too late, my fill

of poems full of birds, haiku

and walks among pines.

But then I read yours,

the one with the police code,

a story that so nearly

could have been mine—

so many times.

And that was the poem I couldn’t shake

out of myself, my buzzing brain

until I found my own knife

in a dream as light as the lace

curtain beckoning from the window

my mother left open.

Until I felt the hairs on the back

of my neck stand up

as I walked out of the laundry room

and down the dim hall

to my first apartment, until I spun

around to face down the stranger

who followed too close.

All those times, Goddess

In some form, was there.

And I couldn’t stop twisting

the sheets until I heard

my own scream

rise from me, owlish

and shrill, until

I’d broken your window

with my bare fist,

climbed over glass, my own blood

dripping into the poem,

until my screeching

made the man run

into the street, you and I

hand in hand as your neighbors’

windows turned yellow

one by one.                                                                                                         

Jackleen Holton’s poems have been published in the anthologies The Giant Book of Poetry, California Fire & Water: A Climate Crisis Anthology, and Steve Kowit: This Unspeakably Marvelous Life. Honors include Bellingham Review’s 49th Parallel Poetry Award. Her poems have appeared in Cimarron Review, Poet Lore, Rattle, The Sun and others.