Of Course
       

I need to believe in love
                when my youngest son
                                says he cannot fall

asleep without his girl
                because he's eighteen & the word
                                Xanax is a foreign planet

populated by Palindromes
                in eternal Ouroboros & my son
                                can no longer sleep on Earth

Of course nothing I say will
                make sense not the weight
                                of the heart he's dug dull

knifed from his chest & left
                on a filthy picnic table
                                in the park where he lives

swinging days into oblivion chain
                links digging into the thinning
                                meat of his fists not unlike when

he was too boy-eyed to see clouds
                show us so many ways to shape
                                shift dying without dying

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Copyright © 2019 Lisa Fay Coutley All rights reserved
from Bennington Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission