Winding It Up

   by Susan Stevens


In this house your words practice my mind, correct
as a metronome. I weep at words. This, others
suspect, is emotional lability. Would you worry
the ghosts and spectral rooms, as I have done?
Would you feel the very air bullying you, shearing
away present walls and fine talk?

Outside, clouds sift calcium dust on waiting forms.
This light drape of snow, like your words, can't
last, won't mean much more than the infernal drip
of rivulets in the sun's fervor. . . . In old photos
left in the car, your demon rustles the celluloid,
curling now like some tortured spiritual whorl.
I misplace fresh metaphors, and rush to snap open
fortune cookies; running through at least twenty-five,
I find no poetry, but plenty of missing articles:
"You will make change for better." Cookie bits
litter the ground like consolation prizes.

Love bothers us; what is there to do but fret
or poeticize? As if learning a language, 
I conjugate each verb between us
but none, not a word, hints
at termination. Then you do.