Beth Woodcome
Abrupt

Emergency arrests summer and without a season
I am without night. A lack of it will not be grievous, but tremendous.

Tomorrow I will be called back to listless sheep
and endless women neighbors,

and I will go because someone says my mother could die.
I understand that there will be sun, even day, but that I won't see it.

Leaving here, I will rename this sea and call it gone.
There is a sense of hysteria with my vocabulary imploding so easily.

Leaving here, where it never gets stormy or dark,
even with the shades down, even with my hands over my eyes,

I will not agree to any form of love. I can not think of the possibilities
of a body next to me, a body in a bed, a body of infections.

I will go home and be good to my aunts who are crying.
I will be numbed, but carry what is left of tinctures

of evening and strawberry, fit to heal
things quietly, fit to stand up near sirens.

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