Before there was any word
that he was ill,
matches struck in my chest all night,
get up, get up.
My body thought we were the same
body, water
floated away,
or the moon called,
thirsty, like these boys
driving up in the dark
of the grocery store, parked
in the flinty lot, wanting sodas
from the machine outside.
Cans clang down.
So late the buses no longer run,
here, where four streets meet;
it feels like a theater,
and I’m inside an open window,
flowered curtains blowing on either side.
–
Kelle Groom is the author of four poetry collections, including Spill (Anhinga); a memoir, I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl (Simon & Schuster); and essays, How to Live (Tupelo Press). Groom’s work appears in AGNI, American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry, The New Yorker, and Ploughshares.