Mathew

By Amber Adams

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Your name starts with the subject
of torque. The way childhood twists
with the fraught numbering

of birth order. The subtracted state
of sister, breezy second to the sun.
Then air moved by so fast. Suddenly you were

in high school drag racing cars
for sport. My money was always on the Mustang
because of its horsepower—the calculation

at which you can move 550 lbs—and its low
profile pony zip. Sometimes, I wonder
if you were ever really here.

I walked with your apostle name
knowing its fraudulence, its missing “t.”
A crucifix taken out for posting. I want

this to mean something but I’ve never
been the cross-carrying kind.
Your name tries to sell me on it though.

The day after you died, your name
really took me for a ride. I said it over
and over until it appeared on the news.

But just like that, it was gone again,
My flyaways still waving in a gust
of syllables.

I chased my tail a while
looking at the aftermath. Nothing
added up. I wanted a somewhere

to vanish like you had. A city gone.
And the dumbfounded gapes of people
open like a gift horse. I do not have

that kind of power. But I think about
leaving sometimes. Hang a cross
from my rearview mirror, 

simply for the way it catches the sun,
and watch the dash lines roll,
this time leaving, not being left.

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Amber Adams is a poet and counselor living in Longmont, Colorado. Her debut collection, Becoming Ribbons (Unicorn Press, 2022), was a finalist for the X.J. Kennedy Prize and semifinalist for the Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize. She received her MA in Literary Studies from the University of Denver, and her MA in Counseling from Regis University. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry Magazine, Poetry Northwest, Narrative, Witness, 32 Poems, and elsewhere.

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