Sentencing Room IV

A Poem

I’d already left the sentencing room, years ago, ignored the tightness of the letters

that kept calling me back, the scent of tears growling through the throat, the temptation to call for yet

more help straining through the thoughts like a colander

for worry, for the tattoos of the rested, to become cognizant of the crush, the gaps that keep forming below every crash of the heel.

Like a dog told to lie down, to not get up, to wince and squeal, and revel in the dissonance of the world light scarring

the feelings as they deign to allow expression a tendency to whine, a distance like a collage, a coming upon the mysterious pine cone

while the daydream becomes a fence to corral your yard. Your life.

This whole crying exercise, drenching what someone called ‘peace’, once, or not at all

the thing that inspired it, ’cause when did the fucking war ever end

till the light that scans out from your head has taken in all the dark it can handle, spewing the heart

around the room, transforming your furniture into company, into friends, into words

that you keep losing once you’ve stopped hanging on to anything else at all.

J.D. Harms 2021