—Hope is the thing with feathers.
Here is a truth: I thrive
on hope. But yet, here is another: if you fill
a pillow with feathers, I cannot sleep—
I wake in the middle of the night,
heavy-chested and warm, throwing off the dark
as if it were a spare blanket meant
for the shadow sleeping
in the spare room. I will not lie to you,
I am lonely; I am restless; I dream
that others will recognize
the potential in me like a cloud. You prod
at that hope in me like a swarm of bees.
But when the winter comes, let me throw on my grief
like gloves because my hands will be frozen anyway—
without them, I will not be able to write you letters,
and how sad would that be, how sad your grave
would be without all these folded sheets
of paper—but really, how sad
I would be without you. Dear Emily, how I
have turned back to you
in the fog—
—for Kelcey Parker Ervick’s Letter to Dead Authors exercise at her reading yesterday at LangLab
