We overstayed at the neighbors’—
two hours instead of the one-and-done
we’d planned. Blame the conversation,
fire in the wood stove, the March night
when the clocks spring forward.
We toasted to more light until November,
walked home holding hands, gloves
shoved in our pockets, coat buttons left
undone. Nothing came careening toward us,
nothing barreling up from behind. The air
seemed safe to breathe again. It felt like
the world before everything happened
that can never be undone, just the two of us
in the dark middle of the road, our slow
apocalypso, dance of the double-yellow line.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 27, Issue 6.
Brett Warren is a long-time editor and the author of The Map of Unseen Things (Pine Row Press, 2023). Her poetry has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Canary, Cape Cod Review, Halfway Down the Stairs, Hole in the Head Review, ONE ART, and other literary publications. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, she lives in a house surrounded by pitch pine and black oak trees—nighttime roosts of wild turkeys, who sometimes use the roof of her writing attic as a runway.
See all items about Brett Warren
