i.
When names come back, they’re rarely
those I reach for. It’s the mailman who stopped
for a nip, the bride whose purse was stolen
at her own wedding, the piano teacher whose
powdered cheeks rained down on the keys.
Which of them, I wonder, will remember
my name when it is lost to me?
ii.
Time’s scalpel takes us limb
from limb with grim precision.
To cut is to cure, the surgeon says.
Time answers with a sunrise.
iii.
The small round case snaps
open to reveal a mirrored lid.
I marvel at its dusty contents
without once wondering whose
image, from deep within the stippled
surface, looks out.
iv.
The world calls to me, strange
clanking of the furnace, three
notes in a minor key.
v.
Great winds blow as the earth
lumbers on in its orbit. Hard
days struggle into harder nights.
But this morning is hushed, breath-
less, as the sun reclaims the sky, leaf
by leaf, ripple, and blade. I am here.
And whoever you are, you are too.
vi.
To see the world un-
peopled—a field of snow
carved from a white sky.
All that light, all that light.
vii.
In the end, a rose. Because absence
blooms and blooms again, fading
softly as it tips toward the sun.
viii.
One breath holds everything: the dust
of all the roads, these words, your name.
Warm bodies, a rotation. As everything
turns, I turn toward you.
ix.
A promise I hope to keep,
a letter in transit, one more,
one more of anything.
x.
As days grow short, my life
returns to me in broken
shards—some gleaming—the dead
appear in dreams, in lost obituaries;
the living turn up, one by one,
each trailing a story they
resume, small shafts of light
that pierce the clouds.
xi.
I grow smaller, I grow large. Less
of me in daylight, more in every shifting
shadow. Wax-and-waning like the moon,
so clear tonight. The tide swells with stars
before it dwindles to mud.
xii.
Startled from sleep by the sound
of my name. It’s my own voice calling.
xiii.
Trees line the white sky; thick
fog grips their branches. Leaves stopped
dead in their rustling. Beneath
blighted bark, there is another
story. One without me in it.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 25, Issue 5.
Meredith Davies Hadaway has three published collections of poetry from Wordtech—including At the Narrows, winner of the 2015 Delmarva Book Prize for Creative Writing. Her work has also appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Cincinnati Review, Harpur Palate, New Ohio Review, Rhino, Salamander, Southern Poetry Review, and Valparaiso Poetry Review, among other journals. Hadaway is the Sophie Kerr Poet-in-Residence at Washington College.
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