by Cherryl Floyd-Miller

Created on: April 28, 2008

A cricket's song while night blooms
inside a room painted in long
slivers of moon, eggplant drapes, the wrong kind
for heavy thinking. I spoon my bitten tongue
hewn from the ohm of grief.

A calm dent sleeps beside me, not you
beating back the blue of midnight, or deep
digital ticks of the catchpenny clock, cheap
but a relic we keep to watch how our eons
tick away, how we leap into every next
moment sure we'll reap more love.

Where are you now? Where is your scent
that hints at what once was fresh between us?
And how did we allow some fleeting word,
some tiny hurt, some herd of wows
to put you in a strange place to sleep
the night, and leave me to lie awake,
talk to pillows that wheeze too late
to know the meaning of a cricket's song?

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