Dark Moon
almost full moon lingering in the summer storm
boldly presenting its illumination
illustrating strewn illusions
preforming grandeur in the darkest form
sassie
I hovered, knees aching, above the chipped porcelain lip—
First stall, Berea Walmart, a place
made for forgetting,
not revelation.
The trash bin gaped like a jaw unhinged,
and there inside, pink cardboard curled,
a cheap prophecy:
“2 tests – Test Five Days Before Missed Period.”
Someone had waited here for truth—
on a bed of wrappers,
flushable wipes,
and the scent of lemon disinfectant
trying to cover fear.
Was she a girl still breathing
under her father’s scripture-heavy roof,
who whispered the boxes to the cashier
beneath a hoodie
and a trembling hand?
Or a woman, already worn thin
by too many almosts and not yets,
counting days like loose change?
And why here?
Not the privacy of home,
but fluorescent lights,
tile floors damp from shoes,
and other lives in neighboring stalls.
Then I remember—
another stall, another trembling—
you, arriving
at my office door,
sunlight casting your silhouette
on the windows I hadn’t noticed
until I saw your eyes.
You chose me.
Not Mom.
Not your husband.
You chose me
to weep before,
to confide the grief
of a choice already made.
I did not flinch.
I did not judge.
I held you—
as one might hold a truth
too large for language.
You returned from San Francisco,
haunted by art and hunger.
You were living in a storage unit,
sketching dreams too wild for canvas.
I told you to come home.
And you did.
But not for long.
Now you are a specter,
a ledger entry I update quarterly,
a number I text into silence.
Your grief wrapped around you
like a widow’s shawl,
stitched from the memory of mother.
I wish I could speak through
your salt-hardened shell
and whisper:
I never blamed you for the ghost
that took that voice.
I sit above this Walmart toilet,
soul paused between paper and metal,
and pray—
not for forgiveness,
but for the girl who dropped the boxes,
and for the woman
who once wept in my arms,
and for a sister
who might still remember
our shared name.
And I wonder—
in her silence,
does she remember
how I never turned away?
Subtitle: “Can You Imagine” and the English teacher
I follow the words
as I hear it read beautifully
by a craftsman.
One should float on the sounds
and not pounce, dissect, underline,
and seize upon phrases
to use as examples.
But I deal unapologetically in tropes,
the personification
masterfully used,
the imagery created
by sensory details.
My eyes use a highlighter
as do my ears.
While I tear the poem apart,
I marvel at its wholeness.
It is so smartly crafted
and beautiful in all its parts.
The birds are already singing when
I stretch out of bed,
light softening the edges of darkness
just enough to see, the world still faded,
finding its way into daytime like a sleepy
child rubbing their eyes.
I watch color bolden hilltops and
spread like golden butter as sun
rises up past their peaks fanning
out through tree lines into valleys,
it’ll kiss the hollows last, later, and
only for the shortest time.
There’s no chill or dew today,
air already thick with the promise of
rain like even the universe is
holding its breath.
People were dying
into a poetic state. Disturbed
sensitive poet sad to live, not
able to know joy, life, magic, dying
to live and love in the world
of adventure, eroticism, travel,
ecstasy. His magic wavered,
flickered, paled, and sank. I can
laugh, sing, older and more cynical.
Stories told, talking enchantingly
of words and poetry, leaning over me
when I was a child, observing
with passionate eyes. Guide
my life, judge it, balance it, sweet
God, conscience, absolver, priest, sage.
Free me of guilt and fear.
sometimes i think there are more poets than poetry readers,
but that’s okay–
that doesn’t diminish the value of the poet or the poems
if anything, it is a reminder of the courage and strength
of the poets, who go on, creating the poems
few will read and
fewer will remember
but the poems will still be here–
once brought into this universe,
they have their place in spacetime,
just as do the pyramids in Giza
and Chichen Itza
i don’t write for you,
or my muse, or “the future”–
i simply write.
Let the chips fall where they may,
but they are my chips–
i was here, for a time,
and a part of me
will remain
