Eternal Recurrence | Nostalgic Misconceptions

Michael Homolka

The point seems to be that the wounds not heal 

because they aren’t wounds but existence. 

There are those whose destinies float like skiffs 

across a flat horizon, fingers hovering over phones 

while their daughters pour out their souls, 

life trials but an ocean of glassy memories. 

I think back on my earliest friends,

teeth too big for their mouths, flipping pill bugs 

by flowerpots, all our parents mid-divorce. 

Honda after Honda from the eighties 

glides past the coffee shop where my sister reminds 

my father of his cruelties, both of their faces 

wet with tears while I eavesdrop off to the side. 

Cruelty about money, cruelty about time. 

The white convertible we kept selling back to 

each other. Light blue oaks and pale orange sky, 

rockweed spoils half a block away. I come home 

and face the blank parking lot, its awesome 

clouds among cans of Amstel Lite as my thoughts 

lash out at each other like wars in a textbook. 

One bedroom and an autobiography of my early 

twenties. Long stretches of undefined time—I clutch 

at their cheekbones, having held out my hands 

to the divorce for years, in whose mannerisms 

I imagined tenderness. The yellowed fields, 

the slick verdigris upon entering the city to rejoin

the present. Daffodils that flow like waves 

and waves that scatter like petals. Each of the family 

remains faithful to their decade—my sister still

demanding apologies from all who’ve failed her.