Whether we ever touch in again like we did
those years we stormed and burned, years that
led us to the commitment we made and made again
when we gave birth, when we were nearer
than breath to each other, nearer than flesh.
How I relied so utterly on you to steer the ship,
to get us through the darkness of so much new,
and now again, with each day blank and yet this break
that gives us stolen time will end,
and work will call us back to other faces, other lives
and we’ll forget. Will we look back on this time
as time we gave, or time we took? I will admit
that I’ve been taking greedily of my own heart,
in strangled bites, a half-starved thief whose greatest hunger
is for time. When you head back to danger possible,
absence definite, remember that I kissed your neck
the times I passed.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 22, Issue 4.
Meghan Sterling lives in Portland, Maine with her family. She is co-editor of the anthology, A Dangerous New World: Maine Voices on the Climate Crisis, published by Littoral Books. Her chapbook, How We Drift, was published by Blue Lyra Press. She is a poetry reader for the Maine Review, Featured Poet in Frost Meadow Review’s Spring 2020 issue, and a Hewnoaks Artists’ Colony Resident in 2019. Her work can be found at meghansterling.com.
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