Another morning — and your name still
slices into me. There’s no simile for this,
or metaphor about how sharp this is, how
dead you are. I’m afraid I’m getting
better at shrugging you away each day,
always at the same time, when the city
starts its cheap music, belting the usual
off-tune torch songs. Minutes ago, I watched a man
drill a sign to an awning: E & L Plywood, Nyak, NY.
My impulse now to go to the window to look at
anything — the man taking a break in his
junk of a truck, thermos sticky with fingerprints.
That new hunger I have to be distracted from
thinking of you — the want for a cloud, call, or friend’s
small tragedies to stop me from remembering.
Is that when one begins to die? When the slipknot you
thought would never let go feels looser? And when it
does, and you secretly welcome that — is that a sign?
“The Want for a Cloud” © Laure-Anne Bosselaar, was published in A New Hunger, Ausable Press, Keene, NY, 2007.