The year comes to a close,
creaky hinges and fingerprints,
a window to see the no one
coming to our door.
Our patience is sand.
It is the color of your skin,
I say, blown glass we craft
into a talisman with promises
we have yet to believe in.
On the beach of Montana de’Oro,
our daughter and I sifted
through tiny shells, stones, beach glass.
I gave her all the green and kept
the darkest stones to myself.
You were crossing yourself
with some holy thought of birds,
my flamingo mask wrinkled in the laundry
and our son’s eyes turned into mountains
we could no longer climb,
so we settled for his words,
doors, muscle, breath, morning.
I sent you a picture
of the firecracker plant in California,
scarlet as the sound
of every utterance I tried to take back.
I’ve taken my last crumb of good faith
like its roots take water.
We are old now.
We have learned to forgive.
Homesick for hope
we gently fall where it is light enough.
Not light.
Light enough.
is a poet and fiction writer in Boulder, Colorado. Her books include the chapbook
Beside Herself (Flutter Press, 2010) and three full-length collections:
two from Word Tech Editions, Rust (2016) and Coming Up for Air
(2018); and one from Pinyon Publishing,
Occupied:
Vienna is a Broken Man and Daughter of Hunger (2020), winner of
the Colorado Authors’ League Award for best poetry collection. Her poems
have been published in Freshwater, KYSO Flash, The Columbia Review, The Comstock
Review, The Denver Quarterly, The Pennsylvania Literary Journal, and numerous
other journals and books. Her work has been nominated five times for the Pushcart
Prize.
An instructor of English at Front Range Community College, Ms. Dorsey also works
as a writing coach and ghostwriter. In her free time, she swims miles in pools and
runs and hikes in the open space of Colorado’s mountains and plains.
Author’s website: http://kikadorsey.com
