Uncultivating Havoc
What we started will eventually exhale
into another version of itself.
The baby onesie I stitched in the garage
became a colony of ants that nightly streamed
down my cheeks. A marigold planted on a stone bridge
became a blood-blackened reminder of the speed limit.
The peach cake I made you, a sweet paean to our marriage,
bittered into a gift of grief. A mother’s death dragged across
the bridge of your tongue. Her memory ripening
in your throat. All these things are love compressed into the shape
of an ending. There must be a formula for squeezing the grief
out of happiness, to brace our creations into what they must be.
IMRAN BOE KHAN teaches English at Bournemouth University. A winner of the Thomas Hardy Award, Imran’s work has appeared in places such as Sixth Finch, The Rumpus, and The Bitter Oleander.
More by Imran Boe Khan:
Author’s Website
Poem in Sixth Finch
Poem in The Seventh Wave
Essay in The Rumpus