Poetry

He sent her poems. Not love poems—she should be so lucky—nature poems. Poems about trees and birds and the sun. Oh, the sun. He had a thing about the sun. And the poems didn’t even rhyme. Not a one of them, not even once, did one line rhyme with another.

            How could that be? A poem without a rhyme? He was trying to write, she knew that, wanted to be a writer, called himself a writer, but give her a break:

                        The fingers of wind

                        left the bare willow branches

                        of your hair, unmoved

                        but touching me just the same.

Okay, so maybe the latest poem he emailed was about her hair, meant to be complimentary, but her hair was nothing like a tree. It was long, straight, red this week. Oh! So a tree in autumn, perhaps, a September tree, but that would mean it would all fall out by October. Another example of the uselessness of poetry. She did not want to be bald by the end of October and, in fact, resented him thinking so, even as a remote, he’d say, very remote possibility.

            He could just keep his damn poems or learn to rhyme like a normal writer.

                        Take your poem

                        Home!

            Now that was a poem. She hit send and felt better for the rest of the day.

© 2016 Kathleen Coskran