Photo by: Dave Bledsoe of FreeVerse Photography

A place of solidarity

The music of

there being

nothing else to say.

The lamplight is gold

in a way that only a joke

about doom could be gold.

Need can be so heavy.

“Oh,” he says.

“So you did meet Diane.

You met her at the wedding.”

Diane could right now be at a cocktail

party and things would

be the same.

I like however her hair

which is a mess of curls,

a toppled something.

There is a grammar and a syntax

to the aftermath. It consists of

certain configurations of the neck and shoulders;

of a way of moving which belies

how eager grief is for its own end;

a parse chainlink of circumlocution –

of where do you go and how is

the weather there; of wondering

if being the first to drink will make

you seem desperate and a target

for other mourners. Okay, we are

all hurting but not in your way;

in ways that are myriad and perverse,

like the spindle legs of the spider.

“Diane had never met him,”

he says, “but she is sure that

he was a good man. I’ve told her

as much myself.” The telling was a sham,

as were the casket and the eulogy; as is

the lamplight and the wanting to not need.

But there is this gravity of loss

in a way that suggests both heaviness

and attraction; the falling down and for.

Like when I forgot how to be hungry

for three months: those were

a good three months and I loved mirrors,

loved standing sideways in front of

them alone and pulling up my shirt

to watch what was once a beerbelly

wither; my ribcage a series of

enunciated erasure marks.

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Augury Introduces: Nicholas Hite is a 28-year-old attorney living in New Orleans with his vegan boyfriend, their blue-eyed dog, and a pet crawfish.

DON’T FORGET: Augury’s reading period is currently OPEN through June 30, 2013, for poetry and short story books. Find out how to submit here.