Still Life with Six Flowers, Three Apples, and a Pear by Jen Finstrom

          After Jane Hirschfield’s “It Was Like This: You Were Happy”

          It doesn’t matter what they will make of you

          or your days: they will be wrong
          -“It Was Like This: You Were Happy,” Jane Hirschfield

It was like this: you went away
to college, swore you wouldn’t
run around with boys or drink, and
then you did, almost immediately.
You swore you’d never get married,
and you did, though it improved
nothing in that relationship. After
your divorce, you swore you would
never date again, swore that you
were happy as you were, that you
were safe in your apartment filled
with books and art, with the calm
still life you gaze at from your bed
every night and morning: three yellow
daisies and three pink, three round apples,
one golden pear—all of the space here
taken up by you. Once you still hoped
to salvage things with your ex, and
you would ask him, “Safe?” and he
would answer but without the question
mark. It was like this: nothing at all
was ever safe, not then or now.



Jen Finstrom is both part-time faculty and staff at DePaul University. She was the poetry editor of Eclectica Magazine for thirteen years, and recent publications include Gingerbread House Literary Magazine and MockingHeart Review with work forthcoming in Thimble. Her work also appears in several Silver Birch Press anthologies.