Impermanence
by Clara Burghelea
A walk on crunchy mollusk shells,
the way they gorge inside your mouth.
Cupping tadpoles with bare hands,
a limp fish yourself. Later, summer asphalt
under the feet, a gaping-bird road ahead.
A man reads braille on your ribs, fingertips
soaking in flesh. His face, a splintered sun.
He will make you coffee in the years to come
and not once, scorch your ruffled wings.
When I look up, there he is, thrusting his arm
through the twinned chambers of my heart.
Resurfacing within the lustered geometry
of a belated snowflake. Snow smelling sessions.
Overnight, ghosts return, a polished wound.
the way they gorge inside your mouth.
Cupping tadpoles with bare hands,
a limp fish yourself. Later, summer asphalt
under the feet, a gaping-bird road ahead.
A man reads braille on your ribs, fingertips
soaking in flesh. His face, a splintered sun.
He will make you coffee in the years to come
and not once, scorch your ruffled wings.
When I look up, there he is, thrusting his arm
through the twinned chambers of my heart.
Resurfacing within the lustered geometry
of a belated snowflake. Snow smelling sessions.
Overnight, ghosts return, a polished wound.
Clara Burghelea is a Romanian-born poet with an MFA in Poetry from Adelphi University. She is a recipient of the Robert Muroff Poetry Award, and her poems and translations have appeared in Ambit, HeadStuff, Waxwing, The Cortland Review, and elsewhere. Her collection The Flavor of The Other is scheduled for publication in 2020 with Dos Madres Press. She is the current the poetry editor of The Blue Nib.