Clear-cut me.
Hang me from the clothesline and
broom-beat me like a dusty old rug.
I’ll be so stooped with emptiness
I won’t feel a thing.
Leave me be. Let me float
in the little fishbowl
of my memories, chew
on the bones of back then.
Don’t gristle and marrow carry
the slightly burnt taste of lost love?
Someone said grief
comes in different colors
though I’m preparing for nothing but
dishwater gray, for wrapping myself
in a torn quilt and meeting
the violent silence
head on—no pity allowed, just
aspirin and gin.
There are many ways a
movie can end, only one
that I can imagine, should
you go first.
Clear-cut me.
Dianne Oberhansly is a multi-genre writer whose book of short stories, A Brief History of Male Nudes in America, won the Flannery O’Connor Prize. Downwinders: An Atomic Tale, her co-written novel, was a Utah Book of the Year, and her poems have appeared widely in literary journals. Her most recent work is The Madonna of Starbucks: Essays, Stories and Poems Around Food. She lives in Ashland, Oregon where she is a slow food enthusiast, a walker, and an Arts supporter/educator.