Poetry by Danielle Low-Waters

             ​barbara w CC



Memory in Retrograde
(after Olivia Gatwood)

You tell me you don’t love me and I hear you the first time. 
Maybe I wish it could be different, but 
when you say it, I understand what it is and isn’t. 
I don’t go searching for proof in 
what it was or could have been. 

I don’t wait for your answer to change.
I’m not tempted by my phone buzzing late night 
with a different story or the devil 
nestled in my clavicle whispering whiskey thick
that you “could fall in love” with 
someone like me.

I don’t spend the next eight years falling in and out of bottles 
and beds with you, read myself into your horoscope,
pull strands of you from my memory, 
or search for you in the spaces between my teeth.
There’s no one else dreaming softly in the space 
I’d carved out for you in a bed that was never ours. 
I don’t fall into a safety net of a man 

with tomboyish good looks. 
I don’t seduce someone’s wife and break up 
a band in the process, because 
I love music too much, even if it’s bad boyfriend music and I am not 
selfish, even when I want to be.

I move away. Go to school somewhere 
I can hear the ocean on a coast 
I’ve never been to. Take risks. 
I connect myself to people
in a place I have no connection to. 

No one calls to tell me my father is sick. 
I already know. 
We speak regularly, we share language. 
I ask him questions, he tells me truths. 
Sometimes the truth is painful. 
Sometimes it’s art.

I fly home when he dies. Sit up front at his funeral. 
My mother is there, between my brother and me. 
All our hands clasped.
Holding on, but clinging to nothing. 
No one talks about his greatness 
in ways we don’t recognize. 

I fall in love with women. 
I know it’s over, 
before we’ve squeezed all the air out of it. 
While we still remember how to breathe standing up. 
Before the words bleed us. 

I know when the 
cracks      are        large 
not to pour myself in to hold it together. 
I don’t slip a piece of what’s broken 
into my back pocket. I don’t go 
searching for ghosts in old words. 
I know when staying is good 
and leaving is better. 
Before the signs are neon and flashing. 
Before the street lights come on.






Depression Wears Your Favorite Shirt

I found her,
curled up on your side 
of the bed
and laid my head
in her lap.

She stroked my hair, knotting 
romanticized visions of the worst times 
technicolored as a greatest hits. 
A skipping record of all the possibilities
what-ifs and if-onlys held.

We put on a fashion show
of clothes you left. She told me 
the Rolling Stones shirt was the one 
and I should never 
take it off.

She turned up the volume
of all our songs. Played them, on repeat
and told me to lean 
against the speaker, so my bones
could feel each note.

Neither of us could remember how 
to cook, so she poured
double time double shots
and lit my cigarettes
back to back.

She suggested the guest room
when our sheets needed washing.
The couch when the sun
was too bright. And the floor 
when my heart was too heavy.

She held me, dark 
and dreamless against
cold linoleum. Crying so hard 
the neighbors
could feel.
​

​

Danielle Low-Waters​ is a Queer Poet, expired film enthusiast, obsessive playlist maker and professional development coach with a commitment to social justice. Her work appears in the forthcoming Constellation Anthology edited by Yrsa Daley-Ward. She currently lives in Vallejo, California with her wife and two dogs in a 110 year-old home filled with art that makes their mothers uncomfortable. Follow her on Instgram@wanderngstar.

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