(In)different

Her heavy greedy breaths

no longer pull air

from our shared spaces.

Her restless body,

laden in sleep, no longer flings

appendages against shared walls.

His voice, 

after all tese years

is distant and muffled,

a life spent

with his intonations 

and likenesses 

filling the quiet spots

of time

and privates places 

like memory.

I find myself

in new places,

quiet, desolate, 

unable to move

and different

than I thought.

Most sensibly,

and quite inevitably,

my own shallow gasps

leave no consideration 

or room for the limbs

to dance 

or provide sound
a body
to absorb.



Painting by Ford Madox Brown [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Currency calculator

I worry when we need milk 

and wonder where the daily bread will come from.

Too many survive famine. 

Child support is over a week late. 
The Department holds the money it collects from others,
on behalf of others, extra days, 

in an interest-bearing account.
The Department makes more money
that way, it adds up in
arrears and years that cannot be spent
growing and splitting heirs.

The college decisions are coming in. 

We all wonder where this will take us. 

We need to pick a meal plan. She will not starve,
she hopes-
they better have good coffee. 

While driving to take the truck in for an unknown repair, 

the sky held up its coolest winter blue,
the air was crisp like minted dollars,

and I could not take my eyes off the sky
while riding home.

It said everything.

And utterly cloudless,
when I spy a shuttlecock of white, like a flash, in contrast to the blues,

I watched this meteoric figure against the broad daylight
falling, fading, falling, 
and finally, disappearing into the sky,
it all sunk in.

Like small talk, no granular attention is paid.
Burned up. I am broke anyway. 

Just like today. This week, I am weaker
than gravity.

Lighter with empty pockets and incinerating
into nothing,
but solid air pumping in and out of the chest

like fire and ice,
all the elements are there and it is enough 

for a poem. 

Photo credit By Clivelindsay at English Wikipedia, 'Comet McNaught with moon setting over the sea' [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.