Simultaneous Elegy
I.
It ended when I found flakes of myself
in the snowfall. When I spoke in places
I knew I could not be heard, whispered
his name until it felt like the power went out,
the floorboards caved into the basement.
I want to learn to fall asleep on fire,
warm myself in the trap. Our skins,
the body of a flame. I’ve forgotten how
to burn. When the snow melts, I melt with it.
I wash myself in the water, say happy birthday.
Pretend you can be born a second time.
II.
Every morning, I remind the dead
to stop breathing. How else could I know
where a body ends? When a ghost dies,
it is born again. This is a lie: I want to learn
where a body begins. How it can exist
in a space where nothing lives, nothing grows.
The distance from here to holy.
Two narratives: tainted, untouched.
So quick, how a needle can drop
and never make a sound. Living a second
time, a room never emptied. One truth:
staring at the ceiling, the weight of the air
stronger than a body. So simple,
knowing and not knowing.
| Amanda Silberling |
|
levelheaded: Simultaneous Elegy
Amanda Silberling’s “Simultaneous Elegy” finds a remarkable balance between clarity and mystery. The poem begins, “It ended when I found flakes of myself / in the snowfall.” Here, the pronoun “It” lacks an antecedent. We are left to guess what the word might be taking the place of. Is it the elegy that ended? A relationship? A life? The speaker’s happiness?
Or maybe it’s the speaker’s ability to ignore death/loss that’s gone. She sees her own skin blending in with the snow. The line where her body ends and the world around it begins has blurred. As she appears to be coping with loss, the speaker is losing herself like a disappearing ghost who “could not be heard.” When the speaker asserts that she has “forgotten how to burn,” again, her absorption into the physical world is evident. “When the snow melts, [she] melts with it.”
Silberling’s use of water and fire give the poem a mythological feel. Before the end of the first section, the speaker’s wish for the lost to have a “happy birthday” humanizes the narrative. Her relationship to the basic elements has been shown to be incredibly complex, so this colloquial phrase presents an especially tender moment. Were it not impossible to “be born a second time,” the speaker’s request would be a modest one.
Just as the speaker struggles to distinguish herself from her surroundings, she aims to differentiate what is from what isn’t. Coping with loss, the lost can feel present. What make ghosts so unsettling is that they seem so real. The speaker needs to “remind the dead / to stop breathing.”
A few lines later, recognizing the physical world as “tainted” and the holy as “untouched,” the speaker suggests that our interaction with the world could be what ruins it. Had the speaker never gotten close to the other, she would not know the pain of that person’s absence. “[S]taring at the ceiling,” she would not feel “the weight of the air / stronger than a body.” She would not feel the painful difference between knowing someone well and not being sure about anything anymore.
– The Editors
