Three Poems (Dawn Levitt)
Dawn Levitt
New Year’s Eve at a Florida Walmart
I’m in your checkout line,
last-minute beer and chips in my cart.
You ring me through without
looking up and showing me your eyes.
Your nametag says “Maria” and
your accent says “Puerto Rico.”
My witty comment wins a fleeting smile.
You should wear it more often.
On your left hand, a wedding ring flashes,
small diamond catching the red light of
the barcode scanner.
A crucifix on your neck shimmers too.
Below your left eye, the bruise,
so fresh it bleeds its colors through
your skillfully applied makeup.
You’ve worn it too often.
My own cheeks flush red and sting.
I can feel your bruise on my face,
where I’ve worn it before.
I feel a strange sense of kinship.
I want to reach out and help you,
but I know you’ll deny it,
like I always did, until I decided
I wouldn’t wear it anymore.
Gunmetal Gray
You turned my world around and upside down
the day you turned your gun on me.
You soothe yourself by saying you treated me better than the rest.
I never tasted my own blood at your hands.
Instead, I tasted the bitter, metal taste of fear in my mouth,
jagged, mortal fear to lose my life
at the behest of your itchy trigger.
Staring paralyzed into the single Cyclops eye
of your shiny metal barrel,
your divining rod of truth.
Hold me at gunpoint and force me to tell you lies
fabricated to save my life.
Black, shiny barrel, metallic, thrusting,
you may as well have shoved it in my mouth
for the bile taste of fear that gagged me.
With your erect barrel gripped firmly in your hand,
you sought to drive out all traces of every man
who ever touched my heart—
burn away all residue of old love
with the vengeance of gunpowder and wrath,
cremate the third ventricle of my heart
until it couldn’t hold a single tender thought
or the man who put it there.
With the fervor of a combat soldier,
you took my heart a hostage and
purged it of every man who trod within,
but you forgot one crucial fact:
you dwelt there also.
When you scorched the love out of my heart,
you burned yourself out of your own home.
Silence
Silence is golden
when you’re afraid
of saying
the wrong thing.
Padding cat-like through
the quiet house,
my heartbeat
louder than my footsteps.
Existing in the negative space,
making myself small,
trying not to use
all the oxygen.
Shrinking inward,
a collapsing star,
ominous gravity crushing
my heart and my soul.
Copyright Credit: Dawn Levitt, “New Year's Eve at a Florida Walmart," "Gunmetal Gray," and "Silence" from Survival & Beyond, Issue 3 / Summer 2025 (Safe Passage, 2025). Copyright © 2025 by Safe Passage. Reprinted with the permission of the author.