No Mark Spiral

1.    d4 | d5    Mark and I played our Gameboys \

2.    c4 | dxc4    everyone kept it secret from Baba Galya

3.    e4 | e5    that she was going to die | we weren’t

4.    Bxc4 | Qxd4    supposed to say “cancer” / but she knew anyway

5.    Qxd4 | exd4    and kept that a secret from all of us –

6.    Bxf7+ | Kxf7    as I won the fourth grade state championship

7.    e5 | d3    Papa whispered “three months?” into

8.    e6+ | Kf6    his phone \ she died and I locked Mark in a closet

9.    Kd2 | Bb4+    crying with the lights off | ha ha ha / Papa

10.    Kd1 | d2    assigned us 120 tactics a day and played online

11.    e7 | dxc1Q+    chess until dawn in my bedroom | I was so scared

12.    Ke2 | Qe3+     of seeing Baba Galya’s ghost / I loved Mark

13.     Kd1| Qd2+     so much – ball lightning \

14.     Nxd2 | Ke5    and the space between us grew and

15.    e8Q + | Ne7    grew | and years kept passing

16.     Qxe7+ | Be6    
in their orbits / their spirals – I am here \ trying to

17.    Qxe6+ | Kd4    stand in the center but

18.     Nb3+ | Kd3     it keeps pushing me out

Available now, No Mark Spiral (Cutbank Press) is Rainie Oet ’16’s eighth chapbook.