Gentle creatures

Sweep up
the broken glass
a broken earth-map
on the living room floor.
You with
antelope gentleness,
gathering up slivers,
so carefully:

I hover,
          at your shoulder,
amputated.
I want to help
reach in
cut fingers,
but it would only
bloody the mess.

And inside a
symphony, chiming
through an afternoon
that endures us
              I pull another
black bin bag
off the roll:
snap it goes,
clean off.
              I forget it’s Saturday,
and that you were playing
video games, and
I was reading
on the couch,
before.

Now: picture leaning
on drunk angle,
frame bashed but
intact.

I leave the room
convinced I will
return and
everything will
be the way
it was.

back to issue

Stephanie Powell writes and takes photos. Her collection Bone was published by Halas Press in 2021. She is the recipient of the Melbourne Poets Union Poetry Prize, 2022.