As In Real Life
Emily Spacek 

I awoke on a Monday morning 
and dressed anew with cracked 
hands gray and blue.
Last week I was cutting my own hair, dyeing 
it alternates shades of gray and blue.

 In May we rushed to the garden store and
traded in our bookshelf for a planter box, only
by then had waited too long before asking:
Will anything survive this? Can language or earth
turn over the unbearable?

As in real life, I could hardly notice it
the space around us holding open
a mild lyric, a melancholy embrace,
an undone clasp 
of regret.

The virus came as my grief—given life—
and I sat on my couch for five days, happy 
that I remembered to fill the bird feeders. And the birds
were wild then, cannonballing betwixt the late July breeze 
the center of some story occurring outside of me.