I was sick with a fever for five days a couple of weeks ago. I unwittingly found this on my desktop, having forgotten I’d written it, and publish it now as a poem.
I’ll shake the eucalyptus trees out of your garden path
and forget to pretend that I am a replacement.
You shift and turn under covers of ash and golden light,
yet don’t seem to want to give me
your unabated attention. Your calls through snowy streets.
Your piercing eyes
through windows closed with curtains shut tight.
You do not want to piece together my tales of drama.
Forgotten splashes of it all.
I lament my deeply stubborn lack of service to you.
And I will let the night hang heavy in the bathroom.
Trying to suppress the crack under the door.
And I will walk to school and leave things as I found them.
I am an imitation.
A thousand lengths of snippets I have sought.
I am the dulcimer and the pulsing press of ache.
I am sleep
and silence
and all those times
I would I had been loud.
Guenevere Neufeld 