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.