The lights flicker 

in my mother’s dining room. A stranger calls me 

by my dead grandfather’s name. 

Events are only connected 

if we want them to be. 

Perhaps the past whispers

through string-punctured cups, and that

is the language of grief

we struggle to translate.

My fingers tap out 

a seven-digit rhythm on my palm 

but the dial tone is the sound of a scream 

stuck in my throat. 

In the mail, a magazine arrives

from summer 2018. Five years ago. 

You were still alive. When I returned 

to your woodshop that fall 

you were half there 

half gone, as though I was looking 

at your image in a mirror

while I stood off to the side. 

You spoke of our student

who set himself on fire 

and you flickered. 

time is a spiral staircase I’m fallingdown

the center ofyou loved thatboy like a son

he lit upone nightin a carin the foresta

supernova burning so hot 

it became 

a black 

hole 

sucking 

everyone around it 

into grief, 

where there is no time, 

maybe, just a path 

into the darkness 

where we can’t

see the reverberations 

of the choices others make, 

can’t see the byway

they led us down

until we’ve followed it

to the end.

---

Emily Light is a poet, educator, and mother living in northern New Jersey. Her poetry can be found in such journals as Inch, Salt Hill, Cherry Tree, terrain.org, and RHINO, among others.