"Gabriel" by Jen Colclough

Gabriel

If Autumn is the most beautiful death,
then winter is its haunting.  
A ghostly period on which  
to bows,  
hang  
The decorative corpses  
of a different season. 

July and August are dead  
— you killed them. 
You light a cigarette beneath a 
streetlamp, knowing this. 
Two lights,  
though unequal,  
flicker on the edge of dawn.

What separates angels from ghosts is beauty. 
To be haunted is to be cared for  
in reverse. 
To feel so loved by an absence that you fear it. 

In a dream, I tell you this: 

That on our knees we beg for angels, 
while ghosts come to us willingly. 
Angels are beautiful because we cannot touch them. 
Ghosts are hideous because  
they can touch us, 
and they do. 

Above us, 
the lamplight flickers out. 
[God is blinking.] 

The difference between ghosts and angels is beauty. 
A dying man thinks Gabriel is gorgeous,  
but a dead man thinks the beauty lies with us. 
That’s why they cannot look away — the ghosts. 
They miss the way our bones are hidden on the insides of ourselves, 
still awaiting burial.

And history, 
you mutter beneath your smoking hand.
Ghosts have a history, 
but angels do not need to. 
Perfection cannot bear to have a past. 

I’m always forgetting that part. 
The part about time becoming us. 

Dying,  
you lift the cigarette to your lips. 
Dying,  
I wish the cigarette were me. 

Has it always been like this? 

Yes. 
It has always been like this. 

It will always be like this.

Jen Colclough

Jen Colclough is a queer poet, novelist, digital artist, and ESL Instructor from Nova Scotia, Canada. She holds an MA in Classics from Western University, and a BA from Acadia University. Her poem “Futures” was recently published in The Power of Hope Anthology. Her poems “May” and “Συγγράφεια” appeared in the Summer 2023 edition of Tidewise Illustrated Quarterly. In 2022, her poems “Deep August” and “Flirting” were published by Free the Verse. Her short story, “The Opposite of Hunger,” was recently featured in an anthology of LGBTQ writers entitled The Petal Pages. Finally, her academic article, “Memorialization in Thucydides’ Plague Episode,” was published in The Journal of Ancient History in June 2023.

Instagram: @jenmcolclough
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Website: https://www.jmcolclough.com

Headshot: Jen Colclough

Photo Credit: Staff