Aubade with frat flu

by Bella Rotker

What can I say except I’m sorry. There’s
another version of this in which we
wake up in this beautiful light, follow
songbirds to class. Here we don’t know
anything but our hurt. I wake up again
in some basement, broken glass pressed
against my legs. I am learning the long-
held tradition of shame. I wake up on the edge
of the  red-brown couch next to some guy
I don’t recognize. He looks like you
in the way all men look the same to me.
I feel your absence immediately like I know
my shoes aren’t down here. Like a poet,
I’m calling you gone. Calling you
and letting your voicemail be the image.
Like a girl, I’m waiting to become
something real. Tying my hair into a braid
and remembering how I got here. God,
doesn’t it hurt to know how things end?
Do you know what it means, this unending
nothingness? I don’t think I ever will get
it. I keep waking up expecting you
to be here. I keep waking up in mustiness,
expecting things will be different. I can still
feel you here, almost. Mice in the kitchen.
Roadkill by the business school. There’s
a version of this where I don’t keep waking
up sick, retracing my footsteps to find
my converse. There’s a version of this in which
I don’t keep expecting you to be around.
There’s so many versions of this but the one
I got stuck in is one with too much tetanus.

Bella Rotker studies at Interlochen Arts Academy. Their work appears in The Lumiere Review, Full Mood Mag, Neologism, and Best American High School Writing, among others. When she’s not writing or fighting the patriarchy, Bella’s hanging out with friends, watching the lakes, and looking for birds.