The Letter

3 a.m.

Deep indigo light seeps through the window

And covers everything in a film of sticky blue.

Snowglobe silence permeates the halls.

In the bathroom,

The love letter floats around the toilet bowl

Like a dead goldfish.

The mangled ink is dribbling carelessly,

Blood blooming from a bad papercut,

But the words are still legible.

I wonder who you are -

Wonder why you chose to sink his letter here,

Or how long it’s been drenched in its own filth.

I wonder if you miss the nights together,

When you could feel the tide rise and fall in his chest

And breathe in the ocean from his skin

And see delicate rivulets flow through his wrists

And hear shameless waves crash ashore

As you tasted the briny lies that dribbled down his chin.

I wonder if he promised you a sea of sparkling sapphires,

A baptism through his bottomless love

But all you got was toilet water,

Waterlogged and limp.

All this I wonder

As the fluorescent lights buzz like dying flies against a window

In the bathroom at 3 a.m.

Ode to Silence

She loves padding through fresh snow at midnight,

Encased by a molasses sky dotted with pinpricks of suspended silver.

She sighs in relief at empty sidewalks

And drinks in quiet reveries like warm tea –

Up, bare tree branches outline an imperfect jigsaw puzzle,

Down, wandering footprints form temporary memories,

Left, a wordless rabbit twitches its ears, curious,

Right, empty benches are clad in sparkling white, playing masquerade.

She loves all of it; the way the world hums a fond symphony to itself,

An age-old tune that will continue long after we’re gone.

The Lotus Eaters - Blue, oil and succhi d’erba on canvas, 144 x 163 cm
Mia Funk

The Lake

In the fading twilight,

Everything in the world becomes one and the same,

Silhouettes of the same shade

A bird on autopilot crosses a steadily swimming airplane

And they’re one and the same.

Against the steely gray sky, the tree branches are stark –

Fracturing the heavens into shards of stained glass –

They look like frozen fireworks, or thrown plates of spaghetti suspended in midair, or maybe just

bushels of untamed pubic hair.

I wouldn’t know. What do I know?

I reach the lake, with waves as melodic as a woman’s ribs or rolling hills.

The water’s pulsing to a beat,

Coming together to paint an imperfect face,

I think.

I don’t know. What do I know?

A lone goose dips into the water for a swim,

Bobbing up and down relentlessly against the tide.

She keeps fighting the current, makes it a few yards in.

I’d like to think she makes it to the horizon,

A triumphant voyager against all odds.

I leave before I can see if she makes it.