After the Dream Came the Habit

Cynthia Cruz

I woke last night

in a river.

How I got there

I don’t remember.

It was the sound

of AM radio

the static that occurs

in the space between worlds.

Like turbulence or vertigo.

And in that blackness

I went searching

for my mother.

This is the problem

with the body.

It’s like swallowing

a drug

or weather, or the mind

under duress.

You never know

what is going

to happen.

When God set me

here, upon this earth

already, it was

too late.

Cynthia Cruz is the author of seven collections of poems and two works of nonfiction. A novella, Steady Diet of Nothing, and a new collection of poems, Back to the Woods, are forthcoming in 2023. She lives in Berlin, Germany.
Originally published:
April 5, 2023

Featured

10 Ways Ms., Sassy, and Jezebel Changed Your Life!

How contradiction drove fifty years of feminist media
Maggie Doherty

How Emily Wilson Reimagined Homer

Her boldly innovative translation of the Iliad is an epic for our time
Emily Greenwood

In the Shallows

Why do public intellectuals condescend to their readers?
Becca Rothfeld

You Might Also Like

Poem of the Week

The Pill

Sarah Wolfson



Subscribe

New perspectives, enduring writing. Join a conversation 200 years in the making. Subscribe to our print journal and receive four beautiful issues per year.
Subscribe