Cold Comfort in October
       

All those born from love-lost marriages,
this is our season. I don't mean rain
or shorter days, but instead the smell
of burning. When what has made us comes
to its sure end, there must be certain
consolations. We are each other's.

After all, we want the same things: trash
trucks that come before dawn, our mother
to wake from her life of fatigue, one
ventral to hold our ventral against.
Who can resist a wasp's nest chest, walls
of paper and their familiar hum?

Some part of you believes we'll do it
better, that our bodies won't become
unlucky skeletons, tired in bone-
fragrant afternoons. This, too, is my
secret hope. And hope is the saddest
secret of all: Please, be wild for me.

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Copyright © 2014 Keetje Kuipers All rights reserved
from The Keys to the Jail
BOA Editions
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission