Pocket Change
I tried to selvage the interstice of your
atomistic view, particles never touching, always isolation
at the core of our existence.
I tried to tailor the tattered tapestry of your arcane inner thoughts,
lace-up a labyrinth of lament with love,
and silently suture
a sanguine sackcloth of self-immolation,
But the thread that
unraveled
left a hole in the hollow pocket of your heart
where weathered coins kept getting
lost.
There are covert costs to seamstress work,
worth the price
if only the wrinkled recesses
hadn’t been hidden
deep
down
in the lint and ligatures of your life.
Real pocket change,
a chimerical cuff at the
frayed edges
of a weightless wound on each sleeve,
where I worked to stitch up
a surreptitious inner seam.
What if my coins had been dollars?
More love, more labor?
Would the cost have been enough
to keep you
in the currency of
life?
Audrey Towns, a literature and composition instructor in the heart of Fort Worth, Texas, dismantles the nature/culture and human/nonhuman dichotomies in her prose and verse. New materialism her muse, landscapes her canvas, and the connection between the human and nonhuman her essence.