Today's poem is by Elizabeth Metzger

World of Each Other's World
       

Grief is like sleep. I dream in it.
I feed my caged son bits of lettuce via a long metal arm
with moving metallic fingers.
In the next dream, I visit the cage
and find him tearing at the lettuce with his beak.
As I look closer, I see the lettuce is paper
my son once scribbled with a mint-scented marker.
Instead of his name he has written Nope.
He is laughing in the dream when I wake.
When I wake, he is mouth-breathing
in the bed beside me.
I toss myself toward him like Antigone,
go back to sleep. Have I been going back to sleep since I had him?
This time I approach the cage with real lettuce,
still wet from rinsing. I wring it out
with my own cold hands.
Pushing the soft outer leaves
between the bars,
I crunch the white cartilage of what's left
and keep the head, relentless in my hands.
As I walk away, he doesn't peck.
Maybe I will wake. Maybe I will go on dreaming something else.
I can no longer make a bird of what's lost.

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Copyright © 2024 Elizabeth Metzger All rights reserved
from Southern Indiana Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission