Atlantis

When I was young, and stupid, and selfish,
I managed to lose an entire city.
It was a subconscious dismantling:
my inner workings working against
the perimeter walls, the carved marble spires,
and the tiled mosaic floors, turquoise and gold
unlocked, separated, like the scrubbed-off
scales of a rare and beautiful fish.

We had built a city we were proud of;
dipped our hands together in its fountains,
wrapped around each other in its clays.
We had found new ways to use beautiful, and,
after beautiful failed to describe what we'd built,
we conjured language of our own.
We laid cement for our city,
fortified its walls . . .

How fragile the space between bricks,
between lovers, can be.

If one person loses a city, will the other still
roam its narrow streets, its crumpled towers?

And if a city can be rebuilt from its rubble,
then I will be searching.

STEVEN SLOWKA is a 4th year Scholar’s Elective student completing an Honors Specialization in Anthropology. His poem “Sturgeon” received the Judge’s Choice Citation in the 2013 Poynt Poetry Award and was published in Occasus. He has a poem forthcoming in Prisminternational and is Western University’s 2014-15 Student Writer-in-Residence.