Every year, I have a ritual.
I throw out all the writing I've written the year before.
However, this thing keeps cropping up.
I say thing because I hesitate to call it a poem,
but nonetheless.
"And when it was time to take her,
she lay motionless beneath you and, thinking
of her clean sheets, asked if it would
be possible to somehow stay suspended far above her bed.
And at the same time, careful not to mess her canopy."
That is the title.
Yes, she and her sat in a room with everything in order.
As I recall lying there afraid to mess her pillow,
her body covered with sachets and lotions,
and I've just come in from the road sweaty and hair tangled.
Ashamed to take a bath, knowing the ring I might have left
would never be good enough.