Coffin Lining
by Alexandra Grunberg
It is not much of a cradle,
but if you’re already asleep
I don’t know why you’d want to be
protected from the arms that hold you.
I don’t know what comfort can be found
in words like “plasticized” and “lining.”
You would look just as peaceful without.
But there’s a comfort
in completing the puzzle
and ordering all the pieces.
Even if I can grasp the picture –
a green field, a blue sky, a dog –
to see a jagged hole to the wood
table beneath the swath of blue
is as intolerable as a restless death
as inconsequential, as monumental.
It’s these objects you don’t know about
that rock the living to rest.
Knowing someone else has all the pieces,
can fit the 3 to the 1, 2, [ ], 4,
makes the sky a little more blue.
but if you’re already asleep
I don’t know why you’d want to be
protected from the arms that hold you.
I don’t know what comfort can be found
in words like “plasticized” and “lining.”
You would look just as peaceful without.
But there’s a comfort
in completing the puzzle
and ordering all the pieces.
Even if I can grasp the picture –
a green field, a blue sky, a dog –
to see a jagged hole to the wood
table beneath the swath of blue
is as intolerable as a restless death
as inconsequential, as monumental.
It’s these objects you don’t know about
that rock the living to rest.
Knowing someone else has all the pieces,
can fit the 3 to the 1, 2, [ ], 4,
makes the sky a little more blue.
Alexandra Grunberg is a Glasgow based poet, author, and screenwriter. Her poetry has been published in Honey & Lime and From Glasgow to Saturn. She is a postgraduate student in the DFA in Creative Writing programme at the University of Glasgow. Find her online at alexandragrunberg.weebly.com.