your kingdom is coming like a jackson pollock

your kingdom is coming like a jackson pollock

Alyssa Stadtlander

your kingdom is coming

the worn brown carpet on the left side of my bed
the dinner plates clanging and chipping in the too-small cabinets
the kitchen table exhaling and creating our whole world in the process
the anxious mealtime prayers whispered for the daughter who moved away

like a jackson pollock

the porch where we fished into the rainstorm, tangling the lines in the bushes
the swingset he built while I napped
the science report on quartz
the piano bench we sat on in that dimly lit bar we were somehow allowed in

one splattered glimpse

the fake chandelier hanging in the cathedral of windows
the foreign streetlight we laughed beneath every night, as he hoisted me onto his back
the hand-knit red hat that meant permission
the brick wall on the edge of the lawn I wept on, as she asked about my classes, even
though she was the one dying

by splattered glimpse

the safe place we sowed into the rough floor underneath my desk
the sticky note with the first score that was not an F
the top level of the train to the city
the way his fingers clutched his black, unlined logbook like salvation

until it is on earth

the deck on the roof of the weathered blue house by the sea
your head on a pillow inside my boat that is not so fragile as it seems

as it is in heaven.

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Alyssa Stadtlander
Writer & Teacher

Alyssa is a writer, theater artist, musician and teacher based in Boise, Idaho. Her work can be found in Mudfish Magazine (upcoming), The Poet’s Corner with The Page Gallery, and in the anthologies Advent: Having Wings, Poems for the Great Vigil of Easter, and Writers in the Attic: Rupture. For more of her work, visit www.alyssastadtlander.com.

Photography by Kseniya Budko