I am not happy, but nor
am I not. I am alone
and that word gets
bigger, but nicer,
like when I lie in bed
by myself and stretch
across the darkness:
nothing but light.
My body holding
my body. And another
breath? There is no
space for it. Only mine.
And only mine sips
the coffee, only mine
rinses the cup, only
mine and then, the day.
Leslie Anne Mcilroy won the 1997 Slipstream Poetry Chapbook Prize for Gravel, the 2001 Word Press Poetry Prize for her full-length collection Rare Space and the 1997 Chicago Literary Awards. Her second book, Liquid Like This, was published by Word Press in 2008 and Slag by Main Street Rag Publishing Company as runner-up to their 2014 Poetry Book Prize. Leslie’s poems appear in Grist, Jubilat, The Mississippi Review, PANK, Pearl, Poetry Magazine, the New Ohio Review, The Chiron Review and more. She won the 2018 Gemini Flash Fiction contest for her piece, “The Old Point.” Leslie was co-founder of HEArt — Human Equity through Art — and works as a copywriter in Pittsburgh, PA, USA, where she lives with her son Silas.