Loneliness this bladed cannot be had
without tenacity. Every night I dance
a slow salsa against the whetstone.
Whittle talons. Shave angles to tines.
If you wrenched me now into that old
embrace, I would leave zags of blood
in your skin. You would jigsaw for me;
you would cipher and divide.
I open the curtains, invite in the sharp
stars with their pointing white, the prying
arcs of passing headlights. It is your due,
but it is my undoing.
What is stropped, gleams; if you’d only look,
it might unblind you. I never slacken,
turn, proclaim there. I may never be there,
but I am sharpening towards it.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 27, Issue 1.
Melanie McCabe’s fourth collection of poems, All The Signs Were There, won the Longleaf Press Poetry Prize and will be out in 2026. Her debut novel, Road Longer Than Memory, will be published by Oceanview Publishing, in June of 2026. Her memoir, His Other Life: Searching For My Father, His First Wife, and Tennessee Williams, won the 2016 University of New Orleans Press Lab Prize.
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