You sit on my sill
in the sun
and the dusk
and the blue
afternoon shade
like any other key,
prepared to open
a moment, an air,
someone’s desperate
vile hunger,
indistinguishable
but for Corbin
inscribed on your bow,
which makes me
think of Corbin’s Corner,
and so the mall
and shopping,
which I hate because
buying things
will inevitably burden
my kids when I die
and have left
them stuff, just stuff,
including you.
So you have to go
unless I gift you
or wear you
or, better yet,
mail you
to someplace simpler
like the Midwest,
maybe to Nebraska
where a teenager
can claim you
and feel less lonely
beneath that vast sky,
can imagine the distance
between herself
and little Connecticut
and eventually
the distance
between herself
and your modest past
when people wore
their best clothes
for a Sunday drive,
not expecting
to see a store
or a soul for miles
and miles.
Terence McCaffrey’s poems have appeared in Connecticut River Review, Freshwater, and elsewhere. He is currently at work on his first full-length collection.
Header Photo Credit: Michael Dziedzik
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