Aftermath

Take our cue from time, the master. Learn to weigh
everything equally: hope and grief, two sides
to a partner we should love unconditionally.

Learn to love a clean kitchen, as well as the ants
around the bin like the spoor of something
left unsaid, something important.

To love the illness, the perspective earned thereafter.

To try and love death; how heroic the attempt.

Then we fail, the hours pressed too thinly.
Mirrors draw out a cry from inside the womb
of a mind swollen with terror.

Then we stop to gather the pieces again. To love
the pieces as they are, scattered all around us.

But look at how we have been tempered,
the selves that wanted and kept wanting –

they just ask for more of the same now.

Let us not give the years too much credit
for how far we have come,
for what we have become.

To love the smell of rain, the cold rain on our faces.

Love the thunder and the sleep it cracks open.

What we have now. And what will come after.


(Published in Cider Press Review)