When Death Stopped for Me by Marianne Szlyk

After Emily Dickinson

I might have been happy with my cat

who would have leapt up into my lap

one last time before everything

went silent, went blank.

Instead Death became the man
I’d wasted my early thirties on.
In dreams, he had avoided me,
even turning into someone else
once I found him.

This time
he tugged on my arm,
then lured me into his car
with the tinny radio.
But there was
no more music
we could not agree about,
no more music
we would not dance to,
just talk.

All the news stories ran together
as I forgot how to pay attention.
As we cruised west past the setting sun,
the long night led to this slot in the wall,
a space for my ashes only,

this place where I am
silent, where I am
waiting still.

Marianne Szlyk edits The Song Is... a blog-zine for poetry and prose inspired by music (especially jazz).  Her second chapbook, I Dream of Empathy, is available through Flutter Press.  Her poems have appeared in of/with, bird's thumb, Cactifur, Mad Swirl, Solidago, and Resurrection of a Sunflower, an anthology of work responding to Vincent Van Gogh's art.  Her third book, On the Other Side of the Window, will be coming out soon from Pski's Porch.