Lately every poem I try to pen
comes with only two or three broken stanzas,
the kind that taste oddly familiar like daily morning coffee,
the first stanza, of course, is a complex and twisted metaphor.

I write about new England summers
or late spring snow,
or a red moon I am still trying to forget,
but really, I am writing about learning to let things go.

The second stanza talks about the empty,
which is to say nothing,
which is to say everything,
which is to say her while she was still here.

And if there is a third stanza, it is of course her,
as if she did not leave more scars than not,
as if she did not remember how I tried to stop the bleeding,
as if any of it matters anyways.

Now I am not trying to be spiteful,
but I just don’t know how to be happy anymore,
I don’t even know how to be anymore,
though God knows I am trying.

So yesterday I wrote a poem with five stanzas
about a crow perched on a ray of broken sunlight,
though I suppose this too is a metaphor,
it at least does not look like her.