Inevitable

I cleave to winter, unready

for the rains, washing away

all traces of the seasons we witnessed

together. My unclean palms pressed

in prayer, I am penitent, mumbling

offerings to the gods for second chances,

redemption from the ghost-bones of grief.

I cannot bear how time moves

from then to now to now and now,

how the melt follows the freeze,

how the purple tulips spring

from our abandoned garden, blooming

despite neglect, how this beauty hurts

my eyes, squinting into sudden sunlight.

But we are not flowers, wintered-over,

nor the inevitable greenish buds, pushing

up through tree bark. We are not

the dead grass that will green again

only to die and green again once more.

No, we are wet as common garden mud, stuck

or cracking and turning to grit. We are borne

on the winds and carried across an ocean,

where we once emerged, salty and breathing

painful air into nascent lungs.  And we are

the breath before dying.

© Ami Mattison


Photo courtesy of Dru!