Function
Have you ever woken
Believing strongly that life could grow inside you?
Of course, because the belly swells with pride to show its myriad utility,
It does not mean it is true.
This is what I could feel with softness inside me:
I am dreaming and the clouds pass more quickly than my thoughts.
I am thoughtful with nothing much in mind.
I am floating in space and warm.
Under all these clothes and my surprised wide eyes
I tingle to think of the most beautiful sight in my hands,
Just as if I had fallen in love with myself twice over
Both me and this creature I might painstakingly produce.
Certainly, it could be me pretending to have this gift,
Or choosing to acknowledge some feminine duty
Where I can celebrate for the first time
The most ingenious use for my lovely life.
This is what it is like to be feeling like I do,
Though there is no life there now, and will not be.
Out the Window
I watched the sun rise the morning after we followed the sun down.
A chill wind carried the silver tips of dawn over the horizon,
So unlike the amber and cherry warmth of the evening sky,
In your presence. I want to ask:
Did the sun give that heat or was it you?
The morning’s metal edge glistens with frost in corners of windows and on the street.
In the beginning, it was cold, desolate and sharp.
In the beginning, I am alone though I was not in the middle, and I am again.
Steps in the gravel on the ground are reminders of this recent history.
You walked calmly through the jagged rocks away from the door
And you will not come back.
An early god ray casts light on that decision
From the distant horizon.
Will this frigid light freeze your prints,
Or will they remain there, unchanged, because you will not return?
And I will not follow you.
I cannot remember now if everyday reaches sunset,
Or if everyday begins with this threatening cold.
It is like being ridiculed by my creator, your creator too,
To lose you like this.
Hairy Long Stems
I put your flowers in a tall bottle,
after cutting the hairy long stems so they would drink.
I changed the water and cut the stems once more when the heads of the blooms started to look down.
The days without you were long and I watched the withering ends of the petals slowly let go of their hold to fall silently on the table.
I left the bottle in place, with the shorter stems, still hairy, but now brownish.
The bottle is filled with a cloud of water.
It magnifies the fat and swollen stalks.
It is decomposition.
Yellow petals accumulated at the base of the bottle, like dead leaves in autumn.
Someone should sweep them up and burn them.
Someone should step on them and hear them crunch.
Someone should blow them to the gutter to get rid of the reminders of the warmth and the smiles and the sun and the gifts of summer.
All that should remain are the bare stalks, stripped and vulnerable,
ready to desiccate in the cold, even with the hair, like on a dead person, still there.
I will leave them in the bottle to see what happens.
I want to see if you will notice that the summer is gone if you come back.
untitled song
I am a baby when it’s cold and when it’s dark and when it rains
Also when the lights flicker or the wind blows
Oh and if the closet opens by itself or the phone rings
And other things.
Am I supposed to be able to live this life just because I was born?
When I climb the stairs to tea and jam with you
I always wonder whether you start right or left.
I should do as you do, and as you say,
and you smell nice so I would like to do that too.
Sometimes when I wake up, I know that I am the crazy one
But maybe it’s really you because my mind might be normal,
Only rare.
My mind might be normal, only rare.
My mind might be the one that’s right, even if it’s the only one.
And that would make me number one, so there.
"All Rights Reserved. Megan Corcoran 2005."
