Pathetic Fallacy
Sometimes pathetic fallacy
is just what happens.
You hear the news, about what
might have been but isn’t,
and try to sleep but can’t.
At 3 a.m. you check again
because maybe--but no.
The rain begins. Of course.
You open the sliding door.
You lie listening to the rain
but get scared because you’re a woman and
it’s dark outside and this country is less safe
today than yesterday so you close
the door and lock it
and listen to the muffled rain thud the roof.
When you sleep you have nightmares.
When you wake you cry.
Your country betrayed itself.
Down the road in Congress Park,
they’ve covered the statues--
acid in the rain.
You hate so much this early morning:
that man, half your country,
all your fear. At five, it isn’t light yet
but you open the door.
Fuck it. You will not be afraid.
Let the rain back in, whatever it brings:
murderers, rapists,
squirrels, ticks, fascists,
thieves, robbers, crazies, a fight.
Halina Duraj's poems have been published in Bat City Review, Cimarron Review, and the Poets of the American West anthology. Her prose has has appeared in The Harvard Review, The Sun, the PEN/O. Henry Awards Anthology, and is forthcoming in Ecotone. Her short story collection, The Family Cannon, was published by Augury Books in 2014 and was a finalist for the 2015 Council of Literary Magazines and Presses Debut Fiction Firecracker Award. Halina teaches writing at the University of San Diego.
Pathetic Fallacy
Sometimes pathetic fallacy
is just what happens.
You hear the news, about what
might have been but isn’t,
and try to sleep but can’t.
At 3 a.m. you check again
because maybe--but no.
The rain begins. Of course.
You open the sliding door.
You lie listening to the rain
but get scared because you’re a woman and
it’s dark outside and this country is less safe
today than yesterday so you close
the door and lock it
and listen to the muffled rain thud the roof.
When you sleep you have nightmares.
When you wake you cry.
Your country betrayed itself.
Down the road in Congress Park,
they’ve covered the statues--
acid in the rain.
You hate so much this early morning:
that man, half your country,
all your fear. At five, it isn’t light yet
but you open the door.
Fuck it. You will not be afraid.
Let the rain back in, whatever it brings:
murderers, rapists,
squirrels, ticks, fascists,
thieves, robbers, crazies, a fight.
Halina Duraj's poems have been published in Bat City Review, Cimarron Review, and the Poets of the American West anthology. Her prose has has appeared in The Harvard Review, The Sun, the PEN/O. Henry Awards Anthology, and is forthcoming in Ecotone. Her short story collection, The Family Cannon, was published by Augury Books in 2014 and was a finalist for the 2015 Council of Literary Magazines and Presses Debut Fiction Firecracker Award. Halina teaches writing at the University of San Diego.
