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      April 30, 2019Living in Space After a Break-UpJaime Mera

      Image: “Floating” by Betsy Mars. “Living in Space After a Break-Up” was written by Jaime Mera for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, March 2019, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.
      She decided to go to space
      like deciding to buy Seventh
      Generation dish soap at Target.
      No phone calls or texts. No
      checking her ex’s Facebook
      page for his updated status.
      She imagined time in space
      would pass like an innertube
      floating down the river. At first,
      the darkness felt like a demon
      swallowed and plunged her
      into the cavern of its belly.
      Later, the darkness swaddled
      her like a spider’s silk spun
      around its egg sac. She stopped
      aching for his touch and that warm
      rush that flushed through her
      as he kissed her inner thigh.
      She discovered that time
      collapses and merges together
      like a river.

      from Ekphrastic Challenge

      Comment from the editor, Timothy Green

      “As Betsy Mars mentioned last week, there was an especially wide range of interesting poems submitted for the challenge in March—and a near-record 395 submissions total. Jaime Mera grabbed me right away with the surprising humor in the first three lines before plunging into incredibly nuanced metaphor of at the heart of the poem. I love how the breakup and life in space, too, merge like that river, so that I almost forget which is a metaphor for which.”

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