Free Entry 2, Week 2

As it happened, I forgot to pack the buttons

tight around the neck of your little cold.

An unmothering effect swept the forgotten

gesture like an earthquake before it turns

into view. I crane my fingers to the flu

of your throat, thick with honey and lemon,

that slugs down the canals of every cough

and whimper. If only after this time I quit

wasting the tissues on the stray spider or drop

of coffee, we might not run out so quick.

The television wrecks the hush of the room,

though we manage well in discarding its presence.

Among the great many distractions I find that

the robin tousling leaves about with its beak,

Just outside the window, to register higher

on the Richter scale of annoyance, a shatterstar.

Since that night we slept, window cracked so as

to hear the stars’ timpani crash the Milky Way, the cleft

in your chin has not been quite the same. In fact,

I find it simply marvelous how it is no longer even there.