Sofa

I long to be close to
where your beating heart
was among its last beats.

I sit on the couch where
we spent your last night —
but cannot bring myself
to be on the cushion where
life was fading from you
and you lay against me.

I didn’t sleep, for vigilance
you didn’t sleep, for pain —
so tired, so dazed, so lucid
so knowing, so loved —
so gone.


INFj autopsy

the autopsy will find —
coloured flowers in my grey matter
still-beating poetry in my heart
unspent ink in every organ
blood saturated with love
bones mineral’d by life’s rough days
muscles fiber’d by courage and fear intertwined
and a slightly crushed but glittering soul

Terri Guillemets

Rejoice, lament, meander

black eyes and broken bones
rainbows and sugared donuts
overthinking and over-loving
have gotten me to this point
and still I’ve never yet made
a five-year freaking plan —
and even if I did — nothing
ever actually goes
                           according
      to
                      plan
anyway

Terri Guillemets

Spiraling

midlife changes curled-up
forties are fiddlehead ferns
it doesn’t look like much
until it becomes unfurled
and once we get it open
things may break apart —

eventually nests unwind
but will we bear fortitude
to turn that new life into
something just as beautiful
and yet even more free
spiraling towards fifty?

Terri Guillemets