January 2022
Bio Note: By the time this issue is released we will be beginning a new year - for me and maybe a lot of us - with a mixture of apprehension and expectation. What won't change is my gratitude for this community, and especially for Alan Walowitz with whom I was fortunate to co-author In the Muddle of the Night, released about a year ago.
Aurora Australis
For Charles You extended an olive branch— I might have called them leaves— your writing— capillaries, a transparent filigree. A red-tied bundle of letters, bound like a deep vein thrombosis waiting to strike. Light lines on skin blue paper— some went up like kindling— a fire to smoke out my demons; the rest I kept in a shoebox of our artifacts, a kind of love museum. You engineered an expert knot, a string as thick as blood pooled in my heart, thin as thermosphere when you fell, apart.
First published in Sky Island
Red Flag Winds
For CK Charles returns on a gust through an open window. In my room curtains billow, blinds lift, paintings hung on nails shift as air comes in. In the night, the house shakes with what could be a foreshock. A door slams as the house seeks equilibrium. As I settle back into sleep, he laughs, his mouth full of air again. We find each other in the hall. There is no aftershock as we grapple with our luck, the wild joy of it all.
First published in Live Encounters
©2022 Betsy Mars
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