Maxed My Bedroom: Mourning Aubade
This morning as I roused from sleep—
I felt your gentle sweetness enter
as you blossomed
through the lucent doorway—
filling my lavender disheveled bedroom
with your incandescent joy.
I lay there still and listening—
my clutched ribs rising rhythmic—
inhaling deeply—mixing you in me
with each breath—your essence felting
cellbound—and me inside these longing cells—
my heart summoning your sound—your scent—
your shimmer in your lovely skin.
Yet how could you—sweet abundance—
have ever fit your earthen
wounded tired frame
from which you willfully slipped?
I gazed at you—subtle—yet immense
surround—my mind’s eye awake—
thanking you again for enfolding me
in love and hope with which to flounder
through another day or week.
It’s okay—everything—you whispered,
now take this day and live it.
And me to you—
You were always this.
.
Koss is the queer author of One for Sorrow, a hybrid book published by Negative Capability Press, to be released in 2020/2021. One for Sorrow is an exploration of grief and is both an elegy and a poetic critique of the limits and failures of Western bereavement practices. Through images, words, and erasures, Koss traces the erratic path of unimaginable trauma and loss.
She has also been published in Cincinnati Review, Hobart, Spillway, North Dakota Quarterly, Spoon River Review, and many other journals. She also has work forthcoming in Best Small Fictions 2020. Find her on Twitter @Koss51209969, Instagram @koss_singular, or her website at http://koss-works.com.
