I’m Rev! I have been wildly busy. The fact that I have yet to explode must be some form of divine intervention. But this summer is looking hopeful!!!

I am not sure this poem quite fits the theme, but it’s the first one I’ve managed to write in months! It is told in five short sections, each detailing my lived experience, which might resonate with other people’s experiences with loss. Despite its topic, I tried to keep the poem positive.

Loss (As Briefly As Possible)

i

My childhood home,

Once rattled by thirteen separate scavengers, all hungering
For growth, alongside a hamster, a lizard, two turtles, three dogs,
Seven cats, eleven birds, a hundred fish, five thousand cellar spiders,
And a total of maybe a hundred thousand ants,

Will now be skewered by a red and white sign, screaming that the home is
“FOR SALE” for the first time in three full decades.

ii

Next door, just six years before,
A father died and was found by his son.

His house held a similar sign.

iii

Humans are often in the business
Of expediting loss,
Just so that maybe next time,
It won’t hurt.

iv

But the hamster died. The lizard died. The dogs are dead.
Four cats are gone. All of the birds and all of the fish.
And maybe the only things that last
Are the things we let scare us.

v

And the turtles. They’re okay, too.