Is the ratio of black to starlight in space proportionate
to darkness and light in this life? Could I stand that?
Yes and yes, I’m guessing, but I haven’t yet lost
best friends, been orphaned, accepted indelible failures.
She has. I have never had to cross out half a page
from my address book in a year. Never had to miss
two years of college at a sanatorium. Giant trees fell
in the graveyard, smashing family stones. We know
what non-existence feels like, from before birth. I hear
a cough drop falling on the church floor. I embrace
the finality of dropping the borrowed key into the mail slot.
But what do I say when she starts a sentence, and falters?
–
Tina Kelley’s Rise Wildly, her fourth poetry collection, appeared in 2020 from CavanKerry Press, and her second chapbook, The Opposite of Babel, came out last year from Jacar Press. She is the senior education reporter for NJ.com/Star-Ledger. She and her husband have two children and live in Maplewood, NJ.