Chris McCann
Pulling a Thread
When your head hurts
say your head hurts. Or say
nothing. I was saving
those oranges you ate
to distract you
from the eclipse
outside our building.
I ride the elevator up
and down to forget
gravity, while you lie
about where
you’ve been. A dog
stays silent so no one
knows when the mail has come.
It’s time for a drink
and so I watch the metals
forged from the sun one
by one fall to the river
and sink. There are only five
letters in the word you
can’t remember and only
one of them is a vowel.
On the couch, it is
nighttime and so we lie
awake, the stars burning
holes in our pockets
the dreams painful,
real, as quiet
as blue as they ever
have been or will.
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Chris McCann's work has been published in Moss, The Pedestal Magazine, SmokeLong Quarterly, Noctua Review and Salt Hill Journal. He lives on Bainbridge Island in Washington.