Useful
I see a window
glowing with my
future.
I have all but
forgotten about tomorrow,
its wild
promises.
I touch the hot
glass,
see a sparrow
dance wingless on the lawn.
I lift the sash.
The sun
washes me in
gold—
the sun, my
great friend,
my everyday
savior.
No clouds
overhead.
The sparrow
watches me
with its bright
pebble of an eye
as I climb from
the barricade
I built with
trembling hands.
Oh darkness, I
have known you so long,
black day after
black day,
you are almost a
helpmeet.
Survival
terrifies me.
I need to be
useful,
a hammer or a
wheelbarrow,
a whip or a
scalpel.
I want to touch
the sparrow’s silken head
and rise into
the glitter of the sky,
finally at one
with that glory.
But I am not
meant for flight.
I am meant to
stand here,
half blinded,
dreaming my purpose.
Sweet
How hungry I was
when you left me.
I wept with
desire when I happened upon
the open vein of
the maple.
I drank of it,
swallowing hard
the nectar
that answered my
bitterest need.
Soon the tree
emptied, and
I sank to the
forest floor,
all ritual
falling away,
the dirt and the
curling roots
cradling me as I
gasped for
some god to
bring you back:
you in your
sugared skin, you with
sweet raining in
your mouth,
in the dark
waters of your blood.
Insomnia
I leave you
breathing deep and fast.
For me, sleep is
far away
at the blind
edge of the horizon.
I am in love
with the shadows
that rewrite my
every motion.
In the kitchen,
I find my greed
for toast and
milk and solitude,
my heart red
with old desires.
I have not left
the trembling day,
I have not
relinquished my ambitions,
I am determined
to grasp
something I
cannot name.
How can I tell
you that
I want these
hours of folly,
the
half-remembered light
that spills
across my upturned face
as I wait for
salvation?
Getting The Mail In Spring
The sky blazes
over the mailbox;
a wild unnamed
orange flower
towers above my
doorstep.
This small task,
today:
gathering
missives from the world.
All around me,
the ice is gone,
the dark leaves
are birthing,
no one is
mourning.
I leave behind
the tension
between inside
and outside.
I make cautious
progress across the asphalt,
wondering if
passion replaces sadness
automatically or
if passion must be earned.
I am almost
fully alive,
the strange
orange flower
with its wax
petals
and long brown
stamen
almost a part of
my body.
Those who have
not begged the
light to return
for endless
brittle weeks do
not know
what I know. The
flower
does not bloom
for them:
it blooms for
me. The missives
that wait will
not tell me
anything that
matters more than this.
Debt
After surgery,
my mother lay on
the couch
like a
vanquished soldier,
the violence
just begun,
her wounds sewn
shut in pain.
I brought her
tea and toast,
I brought her my
premature grief,
I brought her my
failure
to imagine her
recovery.
I was only half
daughter.
The other half
of me
saw a life
diminished,
a light cut back
at the source of
its flame.
How I wanted to
believe
the gods would
cradle her
in their golden
palms,
but doctors were
her deities now,
small beings
with miniature powers.
I’d long since
given up needing her,
viewing her
death
as if the
curtain were already falling.
Thirty years
earlier,
another surgeon
broke her open
to give me the
world.
It was a debt I
could not repay,
not now, with my
weak offerings,
my bankrupt
love.
Softly she
whimpered
as she sat up,
her flaring
temper gone,
her fires banked
for good.
“Will you open
the window?”
she asked in her
husk of a voice,
and that I did,
at least that, I
could do.
MARCIA TRAHAN
MARCIA TRAHAN is the author of Mercy:
A Memoir of Medical Trauma and True Crime Obsession (Barrelhouse Books). Her
poetry has appeared in such publications as ONE ART, Cathexis Northwest Press,
Two Hawks Quarterly, The Write Launch, Wild Roof Journal, Every Day Poems,
Cloudbank, Clare, Anderbo, and Kansas City Voices. Her essays have appeared in
HuffPost, The Rumpus, the Brevity Blog, Fourth Genre, and elsewhere. Marcia
works as a freelance book editor and holds an MFA from Bennington College. To
learn more, visit www.marciatrahan.com.
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