Lisa Kamolnick
Relapse
You hover; smile like starshine
alongside the inviting aroma
of basil and tomatoes,
when you take a turn
in our tiny kitchen
and lose your way.…..How strange
……to become disoriented
in such a familiar place. A glitch
of physics? Dark magic
disappearing act? How tragic
this disordered rearrangement—
you, missing without clues.
I hear the sudden snap
of an aluminum tab
and the universe crackles,
tears open, splits atoms, stirs
a room around, becomes a black hole
laced in amber with white fizz.
A hint of hops and barley hangs
mid-air, then dissipates, moves past
my hesitation, stretches to singularity.
Your mouth, a flash of recognition amid
countertop tilt. Now everywhere I turn, the dark
pulls away—you, me, the smell of this place.
_______________
Lisa Kamolnick explores humanity, the natural world, and spaces between and beyond. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Slipstream, Tennessee Voices, The Closed Eye Open, Sunflowers Rising, and others. You’ll find her in northeast Tennessee highlands or on northwest Florida shoreline. She is active in Tennessee and Florida poetry communities. Learn more at lisakamolnick.com.
Backstory & Author’s Comments: I enjoy spending time in my kitchen. It’s a familiar, comforting place with room to prepare and enjoy meals. One day, as a loved one opened a beer can there, amidst the sound and smell I flashed back more than a decade to another period of my life, when someone dear to me suffered a relapse. During that time, the familiar soon became confusing, other-worldly. I considered how someone you care for can so quickly and completely disappear right in front of you—what that feels like. That was the initial inspiration for this piece.
The poem went through several iterations over time, but from the start I tapped into the universe as a metaphor to reflect the scale of change involved in a relationship with someone who moves from sobriety to active addiction. I developed sensory elements and abstractions I felt captured the disorientation and sense of loss: the familiar turning strange, pulling into a black hole. I tend to focus on music in my work, so you’ll find elements like alliteration and rhyme in this piece as well.
Editor’s Comments and Image Credit: The image was created with the input of “the universe crackles upon opening a can of beer, amber and white fizz, physics mixing with dark magic” to an image generator (Wixel by Wix.com). Interestingly, the description of what it did was “a frosty beverage can in a splash of liquid on a reflective surface, with warm glowing broken lights and cool dark tones, cinematic lighting, add a faint sunrise in the background.”