A Poem by Marianne Szlyk

November

 

Wendy used to think that November was the safest month.
The evenings came early.  Mornings came late.
She rose in the dark, worked, and returned home.

 

The holidays lay ahead with their foods and feuds,
a banquet of mixed emotions, acid greens
staining the blue and white tinsel décor.

 

But in Novembers past, she could not imagine extreme weather:
neither summer’s hands around her throat, knees on her chest
nor winter’s treachery tripping her up at every turn.

She imagined a calm life with the one she loved.
They stayed in together.  Apart,
they were planets, their orbits rarely meeting.

Yet everything ends when it ends. 
Love is not the lease on an apartment.
A heart will stop alone.

 

This November, Wendy stands at her attic window,
looking out at the newly leafless trees, the empty street,
the cold sun, the full clouds, the short day.

 

Watching for what will come, willing her feelings to go,

she stands, a sharpened face in the muted month

that nonetheless, for her, promises sorrow.

 

 

 

 

Marianne Szlyk  recently published her first chapbook, Listening to Electric Cambodia, Looking Up at Trees of Heaven, at Kind of a Hurricane Press:  http://barometricpressures.blogspot.com/2014/10/listening-to-electric-cambodia-looking.html. Her poem "Walking Past Mt. Calvary Cemetery in Winter" has been nominated for the 2014 Best of the Net.  She also edits a poetry blog-zine at http://thesongis.blogspot.com/  and hopes that you will consider submitting a poem there.