For Anya

by Nancy Gerber

Her name, Anya Krugovoy Silver, lined

in black in the Times obituary.

And I was jealous.

Not of her death but being so loved, the runes

of a life freed from time in the eternal

archive of history, where the past is forever fused

to the present.

She died young, Anya

age 49, her battle with breast cancer

irradiating her flesh.

She wrote through the sickness

clinging to hope and beauty,

her poems a raft in the depths of despair.

Her physical form now gone but the poems

remain, lines like veins blooming with blue life --

Dance until your body forgets

what it wants . . .

From darkening days, the light will surge and flee.

Like ghosts the words of her longing burn

inside my eyes.

* * * * *

Nancy Gerber writes fiction, poetry, and essays. Her most recent book, A Way Out of Nowhere (Big Table Publishing), is a collection of short stories featuring female protagonists negotiating the complexities of relationships, and is available on Amazon.