David Donna

I think I’m getting better, and I miss you

The first time I noticed, I watched
for a while: pallor in the sky,
as of indistinguishable stars.

Small, cold pains frolicked in my abdomen;
my eyes throbbed like light bulbs
awakened roughly by the switch

in a room filmed with dust,
fleck of toothpaste
marking time on the mirror.

I couldn't have told you
what it meant. It was late.
I was up very late then.

*

Nor tonight how I'd be reminded.
From here, the past few years compound
as a chord clearing its cloudy throat,

growing as the quaver slows—
it's blowing up the sky now,
shining over the horizon

your city sinks behind.
I carry a mug out to the porch,
watch the colors harmonize,

try to remember
where Cassiopeia used to sit
low, stretched across the treeline.

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David Donna's poems have appeared in Radar Poetry, Ibbetson Street and elsewhere (listed at poetry.daviddonna.com). They live in eastern Massachusetts, where they write code and poetry by turns.