Fortune

Temperatures dropping tonight,
 
our window swung wide to wind,
 
loose sheets of moonlight in the trees.
 
I watch you sleep as shadows
 
become the things I recognize:
 
work boots, bicycles, plumping
 
vegetables. I move quietly for you,
 
for the skin around your eyes,
 
your breathing. Could you be
 
dreaming of orbits inside us, organs
 
that keep us? I like to think
 
you gather the cures we cry for
 
at birth when everyone reaches
 
through a hard light. You choose
 
your cures half-consciously, casually,
 
as one plucks leaves or tips of tall
 
grasses, as if out walking alone.
 
 
 

Michelle Turner holds degrees from the University of Virginia and the University of Michigan. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Poet Lore, Sixth Finch, Southern Humanities Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Carolina Quarterly, and other journals. Born in Virginia and raised in New Jersey, she currently lives in Fort Collins, Colorado. You can find her at lattice-work.com.