I is cut from the sky, a tooth excised by a razor. Rain slashes & the bramble trees sway & tear.
A tap on my window. No one’s there.
But he used to be.
II I wear my father’s old wool scarf. It smells of patchouli & Captain Black, a talisman. All night
the tapping on my window grows. A wet branch lies across, a sodden ghost, & shadows my sight.
If he were here, he would want me to feel free to leave.
III My father said it takes a thousand years for the stars to drift. Sounds right. Change is an adagio grief. My thoughts are worn smooth,
a den carved into the earth by a fox who can’t stop.
I wait to breach when the blistering rain falters. At the most dark, the truth is still bare for us, a magnificent skeleton that we pick clean.
Lynn Finger’s poetry has appeared in Night Music Journal, Ekphrastic Review, Mineral Lit Mag, Feral, and is forthcoming in Drunk Monkeys, Thimble, and 8Poems. Lynn is an editor at Harpy Hybrid Review, and works with a group that mentors writers in prison. Twitter: @sweetfirefly2.