by Chrissy Stegman

 

In my blood, the chaotic hum. Waiting.
I inflate sentimentality with my mouth.

I only have so much time now.
Someone needs to tell my children I love them.

I’m someone. My eyes trace the hours
of borrowed graces. I want to be thieved

from fate’s brittle glass. My gaze to be softened
by the gentle siege of promised light.

I see violets in December and they’re beautiful. I think:
they’re the color of an affair, illicit in the dirt.

A message from my husband burns through my phone:
i want to kiss you

I think: yes. kiss me. before time embroiders us gray
The clock’s hands carve at me. I think.

Immense, breathtaking, an echo predictable.
The cool fingers of distant poles tease

my heart’s threshold. I see the storms,
self-aware. I skip a stone.

A fleeting spark, just before it kisses me
into the unseen dark.

 

 

 

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Chrissy Stegman is a poet from Baltimore, Maryland. Her work has been featured in various journals, most recently Rejection Letters and Gone Lawn. Her work is forthcoming in Gargoyle Magazine and Anti-Heroin Chic. She is the recipient of the 2022 Patricia Bibby Idyllwild Arts scholarship for poetry and placed second for the 2022 Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Prize. She is a 2023 Best of the Net Nominee. Her social media handles are: Twitter/X: @pimpledrose; Blue Sky: @chrissystegmanpoet.bsky.social; and Instagram: @thegoosefaerie