It’s winter inside this string
kept white –on its own
to put your heart back
though each goodbye
returns to the surface
as ice and the sudden glow
that tightens knot after knot
the way this box was covered
with corners and step by step
and along a single finger
the blood you think is yours
is endless and sent.
Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, Forge, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker and elsewhere. His most recent collection is The Gibson Poems published by Cholla Needles, 2019. For more information including free e-books and his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at http://www.simonperchik.com. To view one of his interviews please follow this link.
© 2019, Simon Perchik
Halfway Down the Stairs 