By Justin Rigamonti

Featured Art: Blurred House by Kayla Holdgreve

On the phone,
Liz says she visited a guy
whose death was scheduled
for the end of June—
same disease,
a little further down the path.
So he chose a day.
So we hold each other
through the phone line and
wonder what it’s like
to blink off forever.
We can’t believe it.
Like a housecat following
a sunbeam’s toasty
path across the kitchen floor,
inch by inch until
there’s nowhere left—
and then? Later that night,
in my sister’s kitchen,
my kindergarten niece insisted
she’d never lived anywhere
but the house we were in.
So I played along,
asked her where she was before.
She closed her eyes for one
slow breath, then sighed
and said in a flat tone,
The Land of Nowhere.
I asked her what it felt like
to be there, and she showed me,
prostrate on the floor,
Just lying on my face in the sand.

Justin Rigamonti teaches writing at two colleges in Portland, Oregon, and serves as the Program Coordinator for the Carolyn Moore Writing Residency. His poems have been recently published or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Radar, and Smartish Pace.