Once Wrote
BY MICHELLE TURNER
flat sky reflects a frozen marsh
when I could not find, could not feel
the hunger as I thought I should
and look at the arrangements they make across
the earth—leaves tougher and wiser,
eight weeks of winter in the veins.
When the answers go, where the answers go,
I cannot up and follow.
Questions left like shoes beside the door,
wet socks stuffed inside them.
What I would not suffer, will not suffer.
It is entirely your fault you are alone.
What I want is to chronicle change.
What you wanted, want, will want—
Just look at the leaves.
Look at them now, and now, and now.
Mornings cupped like someone else’s hands.
