Poetry from NER 44.4 (2023)
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A cloud never bursts by appointment;
a mouth is not fed by gating or
gossiping. When a classmate I had

often been grouped with and compared
to died, I felt spared and worried that I
willed my fate onto another, the style

of an infant’s casual convincings. I wanted
to ensconce the parents from my own
feeling that their child was now spread

far out, alive only through uncollected
minds. I sent them all the photos and
messages I had and relayed every minor

exchange. I continued sending notes for
a few years until eventually they found
it painful to follow greetings that marked

roughly when their child would have
graduated, moved, and disbelieved death
for a spell, been its weary young

guest. I share not all that I keep
collecting with the rigor of
an undomesticated wren’s song, vehement

in its last season: joy, rejection, strange
rooms, novel syntaxes, and the wide
changing vicinity of contentment, unclaimed.