A New Year

by Erica A. Fletcher


Throw open the curtains
change these wet sheets
we ebb and sigh into each night

It’s a new year
the city is coated in egg white and sugar

Soon these hard nights will be ages ago
a dusty crate of records
griming your fingers
if you dig through too recklessly

I will sweep up clots of soil in the hall
tracked from your boots
when the season turns to mud

It will not always be the first month
cold, raw, new
blossoming with pain

In time small things will grow
outside our open windows

Our bedsheets will smell of summer
air and light
tears and deception rinsed out in the wash

Maybe still a stain faded by the sun
you can only see
if you look too long.


* * * * *

Erica A. Fletcher works in biomedical research and plays rock music in the band Nurse & Soldier when she has time. Nobody knows she writes poetry. She lives in Boston with her husband and children.