Gather Yourself in the Dark by Adrienne Weiss
Gather Yourself in the Dark
Another spring without you,
and the sky drowns blackbirds
in a yellow grey pudding of cloud,
drowns complaints of pedestrians
crowding the rail path with rain,
even as they seek visual respite: sunflowers
spilling over graffitied walls, greenery
popping as if just polished for the
occasion. But not even the beauty of
the word spring can propel, help me
move on when blocks of time disappear
along a ceaseless assembly-line of
blocked-out time, and rage picks at
my skin, intrudes upon the edge of
consciousness, enacting loud,
penetrating conversations never to be
had, tormenting me with meaningless
questions that cling. Like the spider
consuming its own threads, I untangle
myself from the web of illusion in which
I’ve spun the years of your … my life.
Still, I call for you in dreams, imagine
intersections where we might meet,
the same streets that every day now
vibrate with sermon, constant voices
bouncing off dewy brick, begging
anyone to listen. But all I hear is your
whisper drift across my face like cigarette
smoke as the night air breathes in newly
awakened lilacs, and the world finally
stops telling me how to grieve you, lets me
gather myself in the dark.
Adrienne Weiss is the author of Awful Gestures (Insomniac Press, 2001) and There Are No Solid Gold Dancers Anymore (Nightwood Editions, 2014). Her work has appeared in ARC Poetry, Canadian Literature, Taddle Creek, and Room Magazine. She lives in Toronto.
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