shot glass
title
"... brevity is the soul of wit ..."
- William Shakespeare

Julie Shavin


 

Cantos on the Long Way Back Home

From across the scuffed and cracked linoleum
a memory seeks its mind.

Where were we, exactly? Making love, bodiless?
Who drew blood and who caught who in a faint,
who brought the needle, forgoing the flame?

A future advanced to meet us
like a baby for surrendering but kept instead,
then, piecemeal, sundered.

It seems so wrong that tonight
a moth flutters out its life in this dark cell,
unwilling to be saved.

I remember now: our houses of too many rooms.

Someone was always singing.