Haleigh Yaspan

Essential Divisions

But I see what is happening: my mind loves to wander and does not yet permit itself to be restricted within the confines of truth.
- René Descartes


All this laid bare in a lustrous blaze—
the pride and vulnerability of possession,
conscious worship a flimsy form of panic,
others’ good health a blessing and a slight,

all wrapped up in these vines, accommodating
veins of ivy twisting around one wrought trellis.
And here the point of bifurcation, where I,
unwilling to countenance the measured asymmetry
that proper experimentation demands, arrive
to preach patience—failing that, stillness.

Charring

Fire takes many forms. Most often, the thick, full-body cough and yellowing fingernails of a
woman on the brink.

In the rebuild, up comes a spectral version of the old room, but longer and thinner: the distorted
aspect ratio version of prefire life.

Call it a shotgun room, because a bullet sent through the front door will fly straight out the back
door without getting into too much trouble in between. What luck! What ash!

Difference is a trick of the light: cotton candy pink with sky blue trim, sultry pomegranate and
queenly gold.

Who know what will rise from the ashes of all the days on which you were not born?

Haleigh Yaspan is a writer and researcher who holds degrees from Tufts University and the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. Her writing has been published in Cumberland River Review, Palette Poetry, Stoneboat Literary Journal, Litbreak, and California Quarterly. She has been awarded fellowships and travel grants from the New York Public Library, Duke University, Florida State University, and Smith College. She lives in New York City with her family.