My husband leans in to say, he’s doing it, babe,
he’s really doing it. He means the singing, the song—the way
our 13-year-old stands solo on the stage,
in the bright light, the way he doesn’t flinch
even though he’d wanted to be the talking seagull
or the angry chef. Weary of the lines about longing—
he knew he’d need to fall for the girl,
in front of everyone, he’d need to go all in.
I’ll squint, he’d said, so I can still see,
because he and the little mermaid
were not supposed to actually kiss
just get so very close. On stage, all anyone sees
is a prince: knee-high boots, his hair parted
and shellacked, his braces catch in the stage lights
when he sings about a girl, about her voice.
When his ship wrecks—strobe lights flash,
music swells—and he goes slow motion.
The stage ship scatters, everyone else
washes away, and he pretends to sink:
his red sash, the gold trim
on his blue pants—the white shirt—
those boots—all light up in flashes
between the dark and he is falling
for ages. His body, that familiar shape, his heart
up there, all in—I grip my husband’s hand
as if I’m drowning, too,
the way I’ve done, often enough,
too often lately, at the funerals of my beloveds
gone so so soon—it’s like not breathing,
that surge, so similar to the overwhelm,
the largesse, the bone crack, throat catch
of joy.
–
Rebecca Brock’s work appears in The Threepenny Review, CALYX, Mom Egg Review, and elsewhere. Her awards include the 2025 Lascaux Poetry Prize and the Kelsay Books Women’s Poetry Prize. She is the author of The Way Land Breaks (Sheila Na Gig Editions, 2023).