A Rhyme for Loss

Winter was hard. Yet I told
spring, blooming, greening
to wait. I’m cold mornings.
Silence erupts and cannot
be disentangled from grief.

Other dogs lope by, don’t
hear barks from my house.
I donated unused vet pills.
The leash coils in a drawer.
My hurt feels like howling.

Friends tried to help, spoke
of the afterlife, but what I
seek is a stronger remedy
for handling absence and
abscesses of a during life.

Loss does not rhyme with
goodbye or rainbow bridge.
Like those fools sleeping
in lovely aubades, I missed
a moment never regained.

I wake now and you are
still gone, again, still, again.
In my dream, I heard loss
rhyme perfectly with your
name; my voice broke slant.

Ronnie Sirmans is an Atlanta print newspaper digital editor whose poems have appeared in Tar River Poetry, The American Journal of Poetry, Plainsongs, Atlanta Review, Fathom, and elsewhere.