Where Does Love Go to Die?
To a bin next to old sweaters
impossibly out of style,
colors faded to pale
To a junkyard filled
with rusted spare parts,
piled together under
a diesel-smudged sun
To the basement of your heart
where brokenness curls
into a fetal curve
To the attic of my heart
where only dust survives
*
Spying on the Dead
While cleaning out our cousin’s house,
my sister & I linger on black & white photos.
Bride & groom smile with hope
not yet knowing that instead
of bearing children,
they will bear disappointment.
Mementos like a signed baseball,
ticket stubs make us smile,
but we want to turn away
from medications, Depends,
private correspondence.
As if on a plane flying
through constant turbulence,
the invasion of privacy
makes our stomachs lurch.
We focus instead
on the many flashlights
left behind. A blue one,
beam focused or broadened,
so that when it’s dark
we will always have their light.
*
Robin Wright lives in Southern Indiana. Her work has appeared in As it Ought to Be, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, ONE ART, Loch Raven Review, Panoply, Rat’s Ass Review, The Beatnik Cowboy, Spank the Carp, The New Verse News, and others. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and a Best New Poets 2024 nominee. Her first chapbook, Ready or Not, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2020.
Beautiful.
Thank you, Carol!