Eclipse How long does this moment last? Cold dust obscures hot hydrogen gas. Black umbra, lead weight, iron anomaly dangling from an invisible thread. You burn the soul from my eyes. I belong here no more than I belonged there. My life compacted into a few family photos, wedding crystal wrapped in tissue and packed in rubber bins. A gravitational confinement only found in ancient stars. You are in the shadow of the moon. You know what you left behind. You know you are alone. You know what hell feels like. Not fire, not heat, just paralysis, blackness, the crackling gold corona, and laughter in another room.
Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, Vita Brevis, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, Amethyst Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Tuesdays at Curley’s and After the Equinox.
Amethyst Review 