Poetry By Matilda Young

      Alexandr Trubetskoy CC




For Our Last Anniversary

My ex-girlfriend gave me a broken heart.
It came out that way in the oven, she said,
one of its tiny lobes cracked completely
off. Gold with glitter from a Michael’s
kit, everything afterwards gold for days,
my pockets, my hands, my cell phone
case, my soap-grayed, graying hair 
stuck in the drain. I still love her. 
She loves my semi-feral cat; she laughed
at my dad jokes; she taught me
about birds, although I think 
I am remembering some things wrong.
This fall, before it ended, we went to count
the chimney swifts, watched them gather
 like a tornado above a squat brick church, till
a thousand circled above us in the darkening
sky -- two, three at a time diving impossibly
into one narrow chimney, wing to wing,
belly to belly, quick as breath. I got her 
a card that says “you bacon me crazy.”
I still have it on my desk. I was waiting
for a time I feel less crazy: crazy with grief,
crazy with rage, crazy with doom tailgaiting 
me on 95 in the right lane. Doom doesn’t 
care I’m going the speed of traffic. Doom 
doesn’t care that the heart my ex gave me
was all that she could give, and that it meant
something that she tried. We gave each 
other our best, already shattered. 
The shock of icy air like May 
frost, creeping over the mouths
of just hatched swifts, tiny 
gold mouths.

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Matilda Young (she/they) is a poet with an M.F.A. in Poetry from the University of Maryland. They have been published in several journals, including Anatolios Magazine, Angel City Review, and Entropy Magazine’s Blackcackle. They enjoy Edgar Allan Poe jokes, not being in their apartment, and being obnoxious about the benefits of stovetop popcorn.