Amy Schmidt

DECADES AFTER THE CANCER TRIUMPHED

I took a small bell of heirloom crystal

from its place high on a mahogany shelf

and watched it slip from my hand

and shatter like ice, un-melting

in the stale heat of a July day. I tried to hear

its intended song, small melody of sound waves

obligated by law to vibrate around the room.

But the law cannot accommodate a lie

so I stood in silence over the scattered shards,

my hand cupped in a worthless grasp

of air, the object after it is gone.

In the same amount of time it takes

for a human cell to stutter and stray

from its proper path, the bell was transformed

into garbage fit for a broom and pan.

Foolishly, I still listen for your voice

believing I have not forgotten its timbre, its way

of saying my name.

EULOGY, BELATED

You are the ghost

inside my spine, the snow-covered

lake disappearing into a snow-colored

sky, the grains of rice

a mouse stashed in the pockets

of my sweater but forgot about.

I’ve been forgetting you

for twenty-four years now,

systematically removing

your memory with

the blunt end of time.

Tell me, what of the blank page

my mind will soon become?

What is there to think, if not you?

TO SARAH, GIVEN AWAY

Snow has fallen many times

since the night you were born.

(Is that the right word

to describe what happened?)

each flake is different, but this is not—

that, my thought, as I opened wide

as a milkweed pod in changing weather.

Someone grabbed

your tufted head, coaxed you

from me or me from you

(pronouns are interchangeable here).

Your downy shoulders, hips

and finally your feet.

Out through the narrow

of a cave (I was impossibly dark, I admit)

into the startling cry of light.

Mostly, that was all.

The clock on the wall, the puce drapes,

stained sheets replaced by new,

dropped ceiling tiles

with an impossible collection of pinpricks,

constellations of thin regret.

CP

Amy Schmidt’s work has been published in The Florida Review, Profane, Ruminate and Calyx, among others. She has been a finalist for the Janet McCabe Poetry Prize and a recipient of an Arrowhead Regional Arts Grant. She homesteads in northern Minnesota where snow is a given and sun is a gift; she lives there with her husband, daughter and bloodhound.