Photo by Cassidy Dickens on Unsplash
The bed
covered in empty blankets like old bodies
huddled in the cold—
they will be kindling soon for being wrinkled
The bed is without us, dry and without heat
Maybe the sheets resolve to climb out of the ache of aged love,
make a chamber for our souls
We have never visited a graveyard together, but toured
the Catacombs Never once flinching at the sight of such an end
Holidays in Paris, we could pay no mind to the ossuaries
Dine with strangers and dribble ribald speech over wine
Youth was wet and sanguine
But vulgarities haunt, their heads throw back the sublime
Age has frozen us, our sockets, life no longer revolves
We’d prepared ourselves for civilized deaths
Time accelerated with fire rather than snow
K Dulai lives in California where she works in nonprofit development. Her work appears in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Pretty Owl Poetry, The Eastern Iowa Review, and other publications. She can be found on Twitter as @kjdulai