After the Apocalypse There Will Be Memory Poems
by Julie C. Day
Goodbye, Kansas
Some memories are like scars—
A knife-sharp Mobius strip in the brain
Peter and his Raiders of the Lost Sharks t-shirt
That mixture of citrus and musky end-of-day sweat
“It’s a dishwasher lemon-meringue pie, not a disaster”
Peter had laughed
As the foam flowed across the kitchen floor
And of course he was right
Disasters saved for another night
That apartment in Lawrence was almost ten years ago. These days there were no arms, with their scattering of dark hair and honey-brown skin, twirling Kiara above a soap-slicked kitchen floor. No dirty dinner dishes and bottles of Free State IPA. Instead, Kiara’s new life involved standing on a narrow platform supported by five stories of scaffolding next to an enormous self-sustaining dome. Kiara was one of the lucky ones. The height of the five-story-high entrance was meant to deter strays from getting in.
