You reach for December, rip the page off
letting it lay crumpled on the wooden floor
side by side the days, hours, minutes
still shaking from the final week you tried
to bring them back to life as tears
̶ this calendar can no longer hide your grief
gives way from under the great weight
that turns snow to stone where each death
stays covered with a night
that never leaves the room except as cracks
loosened by just standing in front a wall
making do with what is left to let go.
Bio
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 Reflection in a Glass Eye, published by Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library, 2020. For more information including free e-books and his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.
View one of Simon’s interviews.