Emilee Wigglesworth

Nightmares

The birds and the bees and the invisible woman
the nectar so sweet, the musings saccharine, but
my baby’s shoulders slumped in the kitchen,
and I am crying but there are no words,
she is taking my glasses off my face,
cleaning them on her t-shirt, and I am driving
the wrong way to work, the sun is rising,
and my friends are all saying their I love you’s
on the morning after he rose to power, again.
I wonder where the people store their hatred,
if their hearts beat or if they are still
and blackened, charred, burnt,
the cinders falling away as their lungs fill
with the same air I breathe. How can we breathe
the same air, look at the same cherry laurels,
touch the same grass, pull it out in fistfuls
and watch it float into oblivion?
It is 80 degrees in November and autumn
becomes summer, winter becomes summer, spring
comes and the tulips and trumpet vines do not open
up in song. The machine rages on, the gears turn
just as they were built, the artillery opens up
and swallows me whole, wholly, Holy.