Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one’s soul,
and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject
~John Keats~

If Only

Grass blades catch my head,

spinning like a top,

or fan blades whirring at the barber shop.

If only, I would

remove the revolver from your hands,

pin-back the stage curtain that night

and wind clock ticks of this

to never exist again,

or I’d empty the pills from your system,

carefully, with pliers, and grocery-store

Latex-free gloves

and make you live again.

56 Days In

On the fifty-sixth morning,

there were no bird chirp battles,

nor rabbits whisking through grass.

Leaves scatter like a child looking for a lost puzzle piece.

Alarm clocks turned themselves off.

I miss hearing light switch flicks,

like a punch-in chime.

Or a car door slam making me twitch and waterslide drop

out of bed.

There is peace in silence,

breakfast time words.

And eighty degree September heat

to say hi to our foreheads.

Your watch sits on the counter,

it’s one of the last few directives you gave, so I put it in your wrist,

it’s mine, now.

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