Lyrical dwellings on the season through reflection and prayer.
By Kellyanne Fitzgerald
Part 1: diary
september 27 - my family has had covid for 10 days
and believe they are now past it
i haven’t written a poem in a month
and i suppose that means ideas are corked inside me.
juiced and fizzy like a soda can, aging like wine
or rot. my brother is going to be a father
and leaves are yellow on the grey brown ground.
Mark types on the sofa, and the candles burn
most of the dull, lightless days. rain and cars
make noise from the open door, and my cat sleeps
wakes to meow for food, then bolts up and down the chair.
i couldn’t ask for more. (except maybe my sister’s sense of taste
and smell to return, and my family to care about others.)
i couldn’t ask for less.
october 14 - blue hearts, clustered on screen after pleas for attention. wavery
streaks of grey text, shot through with white gold loneliness. lamplight buzz
like chemistry. sometimes it feels like a science experiment.
“blink seven times if you can hear me, if you’ve been here before.”
my cat blinks slowly, from her perch inside the Cheerio box.
all is well, except my sister has no sense of taste, and the world dissolves
like so much of an acid dream. i keep dreaming i am singing.
“Just like the white winged dove, sings a song sounds like she’s singing”
in giant groups, i dream no one is wearing masks, i dream no one misses them
least of all me.
november 23 - thanksgiving an excuse to get drunk
online shopping frantically to make christmas something more than
the same four walls. If i see something someone would like
i buy it. their imagined joy brings a bolt of happiness. is this substance
abuse? the future they will live, that is all i can hold on to? my needle
bites in and out of fabric, leaving a black stain that i call embroidery.
“this is my comfort shirt” says my sister, of the embroidered sweatshirt
i gave her last year. If no one will comfort me, I will have to comfort them.
lilac to violet glass, with coral and peach pink flecks. coffee that tastes
like winter, or just coffee that is supposed to taste like winter. maple syrup
smells like butterscotch, when it really comes down to it.
Part 2: prayer
in the absence of Christ, we will create a home he might inhabit.
my boyfriend is worried that I am pregnant. my brother’s baby
is brand new, and i will not meet him until he is 6 months older,
at the youngest. so many months and weeks gone gone, eaten
by apathy, by the gentle virus who only comes to those who stretch out their hands
and welcome it (and to those forgotten by the rest - those who have no choice.)
come lord Jesus come - fall like snow and truck horns on the quiet of things.
bring the opposite of peace- this year we do not need it. we need awakening
and alarm and the jerking clutch of the steering wheel at the sight of deer
legs in the dusk before us. Stop us before we have lost everything.
silence has brought only averted eyes, prickle of discomfort
when someone is in need. instead of giving, we talk about the system.
instead of weeping, a shaky laugh at dinner, to preserve a salad that only worsens
with age. throw it away, plant a garden in the spring. I visit a farmer for fresh food
and seethe at his staked down politics. the systems of my soul so violently,
casually at odds, dismissive of my surroundings. dark gold rustling corn stalks
and the smoked lung chill of periwinkle sky. you have already told me the path.
in the name of yourself, come Lord Jesus come. come as you already have-
an immigrant child sent not to illuminate, but to show us ourselves in his eyes. Peace
that passes all understanding, - that does not silence, but wakes with a gasp in the dark
and throwing off of blankets. peace like river stones, water worn, weighted
within us, and without us. folding nail bitten hands as well as those with marbled acrylics,
and put them into work for the kingdom of heaven. The race is not won.
The ungodforsaken year is not yet over. (Christ has not yet come.)
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