Empty Room

Once a day I tour his room
the cat no longer naps in, dust
the shelf his helmet used to fill,
the dresser drawers now empty. He left
his too-small clothes for me
to sort. I chose two shirts
so swiftly outgrown they weren’t
laundered and now am wrapped
to my wrists in a dark blue
new to me. Tomorrow a surgeon far
from here will splice his nerve
and tendon, re-stitch his ring
finger’s flesh, and leave a scar
from his love for somewhere else.

Charmed Weekend for Beverly and Sue

We hug as we meet in the street
for the first time in seven years,
exclaim how unchanged we appear
while local cabbies honk and glare
but fairy dust keeps all their fingers
wrapped around the steering wheel.
The hugs are tight, with arms we know
from thinner times, darkened to
admired tans in past July’s.
We sort through photos of former frogs
with too-large spectacles and hair
feathered and center-parted.
The world’s compelling charms to seek
the kiss, the crown, the dress have dropped.
We are surrounded by the spell
of easy narration: I don’t need to tell
them that once upon a time
I had a brother, but one crisp
October day I bit an apple;
or Beverly, that she was hit
with one apple after another.
We talk instead how a prince still stuns
even without hair, but he won’t—
and birds won’t either, for that matter—
bring happiness on a sparkling platter,
of teaching step-children to talk
when they’re not used to open doors,
of how we wake ourselves from sleep,
and learn to peel the fruit,
how we select the words each day
with which we shape our ever after.

Michelle DeRose teaches creative writing and African-American, Irish, and world literature at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Her most recent poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Sparks of Calliope, Dunes Review, Making Waves, The Journal of Poetry Therapy, and Healing Muse.