By Susan Sonde

They’ve trimmed my hair, pared my nails, picked my teeth clean with a knife, Broom strolls from the closet. Cat’s got a wild look in his eyes. I’m thirsty. Fire’s burning up the morning darkness. I think he wants to kill me. 

I thought of you again last night. 

The streets are overflowing with people. The water in my tap’s never cold enough. How much you didn’t love me. In winter it’s never hot. My algorithms don’t add up. There goes the neighborhood dive bar. 

My memories of you are endless       

winding stairwells. I never reach the top. Oh, memory that stems from abandonment, you make my head heavy with zeroes. The butchery of the heart never stops. I, always the first to  apologize. You, always looking naked and desirable in the clothes you wear when you leave. Your name in my throat’s become a feral cry. Our lives together were a rising tide. Day after mismanaged day going under. My thoughts grew increasingly fearful of one another. Standing under water made me giddy on my feet.

The wind’s turning pages. I hear the slurred speech of trees, the rustle of a few raindrops it hectors into the leaves. Air’s the color of an open wound left to fester. It’s a challenge to breathe. Street’s now flat as a meadow minus its mellifluous sheep. The day won’t hold still for a picture and there are ashes between my teeth.

About the Author: Susan Sonde is an award winning poet and short story writer. Her debut collection: In the Longboats with Others won the Capricorn Book Award and was published by New Rivers Press. The Arsonist,  her fifth collection was released in 2019 from Main Street Rag. Her sixth collection, Evenings at the Table of an Intoxicantwas a finalist in the New Rivers New Voices 2019 contest. The Last Insomniac was a 2019 finalist in The James Tate Award. 

Grants and awards include, a National Endowment Award in poetry; grants in fiction and poetry from The Maryland State Arts Council; The Gordon Barber Memorial Award from The Poetry Society of America. Her collection The Chalk Line was a finalist in The National Poetry Series.  Individual poems have appeared in Barrow Street, The North American Review, The Southern Humanities Review, The Mississippi Review, American Letters and Commentary, Bomb, New Letters, Southern Poetry Review, and many others.