“Mrs. Luzajic as Hebe” by Lorette C. Luzajic

“Mrs. Luzajic as Hebe” by Lorette C. Luzajic is part poem, part essay; part dream, part terror. Hebe is the ancient goddess of the prime of life, but “when you’re dying, nostalgia kicks in the way desire once did.” The narrator journeys near and far, searching for chardonnay and ceviche, but also seemingly never leaves her own kitchen. There, she brews espresso and spins stories. There, eventually, she lives and lives and lives, thank the goddesses.  —Court Harler

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a love poem for Brent Terry

Under the knife, under the needle. I can’t even say I was determined to survive. The reaper had followed me for so long, in different disguises, with an impressive array of tactics, I was not certain I’d outwit him again. I hoped for the best and planned for the worst. I took my medicine. 

When you’re dying, nostalgia kicks in the way desire once did. Hard and hungry. Tantalizing flickers of foolish yesterdays: I had my middle finger to the world and an arsenal of dreams left to shatter. Then, there, driving through Dakota. The stars from the back of the pickup. Patti Smith growling her poems from the front cab radio. A bottomless bottle of bourbon. Now, here, you are a deer caught in the headlights. You’ve been caught with your pants down. Life has you by the balls.

When you are careening along that winding hairpin cliff, the Pacific Coast Highway, everything you know unravels. You are unbecoming. You let go of unfinished things. The details whir past in a slurry, intangible. I took that highway again, later, further south, in Mexico, on a bus, splattering iguanas. Reeling into the turquoise forever with a gone friend, who was, then, there, mirror Ray-Bans and eggshell linen trousers. I prayed my heart out for the driver. And we made it to the sea.

There was more: the portent glow of a bright moon and the sound of silence in the southern swamps. The bats in Barcelona. Their swooping, and the swallows.

What you find here in the valley of the shadow of death is how every moment matters. The beauty, of course, yes, sublime: Spanish guitar; pastels de nata; head-back laughing; good chardonnay that tastes of cigars. But also: every single fucking hurt and hell is a magic spell.

And then, sometimes, you come back. You find yourself in the kitchen, measuring out Lively Up espresso beans, getting ready for work. You find yourself at a table with good friends, slurping ceviche and lime. And you realize you really don’t have a clue how you got there. But here we are.

I grew so much closer to God. And so much further away from knowing what that even means.

There were times when I didn’t know who I was. And then I did. And sometimes, I felt like I had always known. Sometimes when I was flickering in the liminal, I saw the ghost light: beacons in the dark loam that slowly swallowed me, the lighthouse that was a friend.

I had spells where I thought about strange things. Like, what if, you already were? What if your whole life was really the story of your unbecoming?

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LORETTE C. LUZAJIC reads, writes, and teaches flash. She is the founder of The Ekphrastic Review and The Mackinaw: a journal of prose poetry.

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Featured image by The New York Public Library, courtesy of Unsplash.