Undone

Eyes closed, he gripped the sink
and said,  Undone,
and began to slide against me,
who could not hold him,
could not keep him
from sinking to the floor
like an anchor
to the bottom of the sea.

I stood for an instant
an instant only
in that small crowded space,
saying nothing, dreading
what I didn’t know:
was he passing out or passing on?

Neither,
but I wondered in the aftermath
if I would miss that weight ,
the load I had been carrying
when taken from me,
if, unmoored,
  I’d drift like a boat into open sea.

 

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Rina Ferrarelli's The Bread We Ate, a collection of original poetry, was published in 2012 by Guernica. She has also published two other works of original poetry, Dreamsearch (malafemmina) and Home is Foreign Country (Eadmer), and two bilingual editions of translations, I Saw the Muses (Guernica), and Winter Fragments (Chelsea). She was awarded an NEA and the Italo Calvino Prize. Two of her poems, "The Young Immigrant Writes to a Friend Back Home" and "Mayflies" were Included in WRITTEN ON WATER, Writings about the Allegheny River (Mayapple Press, 2013).