Packages
by Pat Haney
Most mornings, I wake up before my girlfriend. Showered. Clothed. Fed. Out the door before she tosses over to my side, limbs spread out across the entirety of the full sized bed I bought after we broke my twin. I wonder, when she does wake up, if she ever thinks about reading my journal. The mid-sized black moleskin she gifted me our first holiday together. I wonder if she considers pulling it from underneath the mattress and slipping off the elastic closure—fingering through pages of half drunken poems and scribbles of post-therapy reflections and sketches of house plants hanging from paper ceilings.
I wouldn’t blame her if she did. Some days, when I come home through my apartment’s vestibule, I see packages strewn across the stained burgundy carpet. I want to pick them all up. I want to take them inside and close my bedroom door and poke and prod each one like a Christmas morning guessing game. I want to know what it’s like to feel their excitement, hold their pleasure.
Pat Haney is a young poet originally from East Lansing, Michigan. Much of their work is inspired by the exploration of their queer and biracial identities growing up in the Midwest. Now, Patricia is a senior at DePaul University double majoring in Writing & Rhetoric and Creative Writing. Over the past several years, they've had work appear in Chicago-based magazines such as Injustice Watch, 14 East, Eclectica Magazine, and Crook & Folly.