Wednesday, March 06, 2024

Changeling

    This appeared in Staple


If it isn't the roof, the plumbing's goes,

Or the showerhead, or the parakeet. Like that.

Sometimes the years of dry, furnace-forced air

will shrink the floorboards. What was glossy, grays.

Sometimes the one you turn to isn't there

in the bed; or perhaps she is, but gone

to ghost, and you can never be alone

more than you are right then, which is enough, thanks.



They told you nothing stays, claimed, as you found,

that change is what there is. But this is less.

Everything leaves, but not entirely:

the bird's cry from the elm tree high above

the dust of rooftrees laid down many moons

rouses the form whom you still try to hold.


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