5 a.m. You slept through cosmic
splendor again. All night,
you imagine, the blood-red moon
scaled the clouds outside your window,
rising, smoldering, and you forgot
to look. Morning strolls in, bearing a new
batch of apocalyptic headlines, coffee
steeped a few minutes too long, a fresh
ache deep inside your knee. Morning
sings you a litany, a murder ballad
of tasks undone. You can’t bear
even your own weight anymore,
can’t bring yourself to load the tower
of plates into the rack, to sweep
white tumbleweeds the Roomba
couldn’t reach. Morning comes,
this miracle you’ve been granted,
and you wish she would brush
her teeth for once, braid her hair
along the crown, change the stale
gray leggings she wore yesterday.
Why bother? she says. You never listen.
You never look at me. You look
out the window—steady fizz
of rain hitting snow. The dead
grass. The darkness. The plastic
bag of dog shit a neighbor left
beside your trash can. Stars
dissolved in cloud. Morning laces
up your trainers, drags you
to the gym to pedal a bike
that goes nowhere, strobe lights
and bass line thumping in your bones.
On your walk home, the rain
has stopped, and you feel
the machinery of your muscles
working under skin, the cold ring
around your ankles between sock
and hem, exposed to wind.
Morning says, Just be with me.
Like old times. You round
the corner, and there it is—a pearl
thumbtack still pinned to the faded
purple flannel of the sky—aged, smaller,
paler, but still there after a long, fiery
night, after the blood has drained.
Thanks to Pank, where this poem first appeared.
Sarah Burke 