Everything after aches
river & bones &
the unsaid naming itself
endlessly. He comes to me
in dreams, and I reach
for needle & thread
to close the tear
at his knee.
This morning I found
ants in the saltshaker, a pattern
repeated in new snow
peppered with black walnuts.
I confess, with my tongue
I press His body
to the roof of my mouth,
sometimes I feel rose petal,
sometimes blister.

###

Patty Paine is the author of Grief & Other Animals (Accents Publishing, 2015), The Sounding Machine (Accents Publishing, 2012), Feral (Imaginary Friend Press, 2012), Elegy & Collapse (Finishing Line Press, 2006), and co-editor of Gathering the Tide: An Anthology of Contemporary Arabian Gulf Poetry (Garnet Publishing & Ithaca Press, 2011) and The Donkey Lady and Other Tales from the Arabian Gulf (Berkshire, 2013). Her poems, reviews, and interviews have appeared in Blackbird, The Louisville Review, Gulf Stream, The Journal and other publications. She is the founding editor of Diode Poetry Journal, and Diode Editions, and is an assistant professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University Qatar where she teaches writing and literature, and is interim director of Liberal Arts & Sciences.

“Notes On Mirrors, Already Lost” first appeared in OCHO #16 and has just been published within Grief & Other Animals (Accents Publishing).