Requiem for the Narcissist

By Alexa Doran

More than I need the seafoam hearse

of the therapist’s couch, I need to know dying exists. 

In the fern-dread of Sunday, my son tells me I know exactly where God sits. 

And now I see. God is only in repose. 

That motherfucker. Watching me 

drown in five counts. Watching labor and nether and roots un-drool.  

And I try hard not to be mad that He made you holy. That I made you

holy. My son smiles across the station wagon. 

He has no idea what it means to be holy 

but he wants to be here with the grass and the weather and the commercials 

for a hi-res life we’ll never have because no man wants me

long enough to want him too.  

I try to explain that sometimes the secret has no language. 

It’s hard to explain touch or that you were 

a voice over water, the way wind is only there to fuck up air. 

I know you never needed 

my story. That black lace seemed appropriate  

for all our endeavors should have screamed this is a funeral and I’m the cadaver 

but here I am, psalm-swollen as my son tallies the seconds

I’m alone as proof: God is gone and mothers are fools.   

About the Author

Alexa Doran recently completed her PhD in poetry at Florida State University. Her collection DM Me, Mother Darling won the 2020 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize and was published in April 2021 (Bauhan). She is also the author of the chapbook Nightsink, Faucet Me a Lullaby (Bottlecap Press 2019). You can look for work from Doran in recent or upcoming issues of Pleiades, Witness, Massachusetts Review, pidgeonholes, NELLE, and Gigantic Sequins, among others. For a full list of her publications, awards, and interviews please visit her website at alexadoran.com.