2 Poems

Autumn shrugs into view, closer

skies. A slow and gentle dying.

Stacks of Halloween decorations

piled in the basement, probably

cobwebbed for real now, and I

should have bought costumes.

I should be sleepless—and I am

sometimes, just not in the way

I anticipated. Too many nights,

I stumble toward unconsciousness

and feel afraid, jolt myself awake

in a panic because I remember

too well the feeling of a body

that no longer feels familiar.

It’s rained all week, and normally

I love the gray, the patter of drops

against the aluminum siding,

the way they echo like a song

in the fireplace. But these days,

the sky feels too heavy, the air

too thick. I could suffocate on it,

and the thought is deep and old,

yanks me back to second grade

and a baptism I didn’t want,

the water swallowing the light,

a crowd of people below clapping

and me pressing my nose closed

with the desperation of the dying.

I don’t have it in me to tell anyone

that there is no next time, that I can’t

walk that road again, feel my body

drift away, feel another body torn

from mine, swollen and already gone.

There is no cure. I’ll let my days

waste away, every poem touching

the same bruise, pressing it.

What is left but this? Who am I

but this—wrecked, weary,

venomous as the day is long.

I should be golden-eyed and wild,

curled in wait. Instead I watch the world

pass, bare fangs at my own reflection.

The pale gray cast of the sky, the wide

blankness just before snowfall. The ticking

of the two wristwatches on the counter,

never quite in sync. She came home

yesterday, stood her boots in the corner

of the bedroom. The cat tried to climb

into the left one, knocked it over,

and now it lies there like a dead fish—

shiny and still.

Three drinks in, and nothing has changed,

except her cadence. A video played

on the laptop on the table, the resolution

poor, faces blurred, colors messy.

A ring glistened in the wood, residue

from an old drink, a glass now broken.

The snag on the elbow of her sweater.

The catch in her voice on the word

yesterday. She fell asleep on the couch,

a striped throw pillow crushed

in her arms, flecks of mascara caught

in the half-moons beneath her eyes.