Today's poem is by Emma DePanise

Focal Point
       

My sister tells me she saw a squirrel eating another
squirrel on campus. I don't ask questions and she doesn't
describe any further. I imagine tiny brown hands resting
on a split stomach. Last week, I went for a walk and just missed
a tree limb falling behind me. There is destruction everywhere
I mistake as color. Red trees leaning more red, sunsets sliced
purple. I haven't washed the blue-gray shirt I wore
the last time we had sex at my old address. I wonder
if it's grown bacteria? One less piece of laundry to fold.
I'm afraid my edges are more ragged than people think.
In years of overabundance, a male red squirrel might kill
squirrel pups to stop their mother's lactation so she can mate
again with him. There is color everywhere I mistake
as destruction. The orange-and-teal confettied bus seats
in which I wait next to someone and someone else breathing
like the engine that heats air and exhales into everything else.

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Copyright © 2023 Emma DePanise All rights reserved
from The Greensboro Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission