On Television, Birds Sing When You’re Sober

but no one tells you that being clean means a clear eye
on your misery. You see that your main job is staying in your shit
and never again doing the one thing that you were so good at.

Sure you were hell bent but what fun it was to be fun,
to not know a night until it came back next day when you
tuned into your own half-remembered opera and saw yourself dancing,
fearless, fish-nets and all, body spilling and celebrated.

You’re told this is brave, your cup of coffee. But how shrunken you are,
how girdled, like you live encased in layers of spandex.
No one tells you, but one day you’ll see that most bullshit
wasn’t the booze’s fault. And no birds sing.

On My Daughter’s Birthday

Reach down and you can feel her said the midwife,
and if you ask me when I fell in love with you,
that was it, when I touched your hot crown
and realized you were leaving me.

You keep leaving. I want to ask you
what I can’t ask you. To stay here
just this side of catching on to me. To stop
before you figure out my fuck-ups.

But every year you are closer to hindsight
to calling this a rough time,
telling stories around the ways I failed you.

Closer too to the other side
when blame gives way to pity
in tiny splinters of memory.
I guess she tried you will say
and dear God I did. I do. I love you
and how you escaped me,
how you knew I was your start
but not your destination.

You Need it Spelled Out

On the couch where normal things happened
a loveseat really though you were always alone
on the couch where things were normal
until they were not and the phone slipped
from your shoulder where you’d cradled it
like you normally did like it was the old days
when cords spiraled towards kitchens
the old days when you thought it was normal
to know no end of longing but today
you were not the one to hang up first
though you were the first to feel an end

Jessica L. Walsh is the author of Book of Gods and Grudges (Glass Lyre Press, 2022) as well as two previous collections. Her work has appeared in many journals like RHINO, Whale Road Review, Ninth Letter, and more. She is the blog mistress at Agape Editions. Originally from small-town Michigan, she now lives outside of Chicago with her family and teaches at a community college. Find more at jessicalwalsh.com

Hypertext Magazine and Studio (HMS) publishes original, brave, and striking narratives of historically marginalized, emerging, and established writers online and in print. HMS empowers Chicago-area adults by teaching writing workshops that spark curiosity, empower creative expression, and promote self-advocacy. By welcoming a diversity of voices and communities, HMS celebrates the transformative power of story and inclusion.

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