Domestic Aubade
Stephanie Kirby
Water thickens at the drain, circles low
like loss. I’ll want you to clear the pooling
drips that hold our gaze up to us, to use
the plastic plunger to disrupt the faces
we have today. An aid for release, a big
ask of a basin clogged with the refuse
we’ve lost: hair, skin sloughed like molted
selves. To part with all of this fallen
matter we’ve shed. To wait for chemical
corrosion to set, demand the other parts of us
that will decay fit into the pipes, their brassy
light twisting below the flooding sink.
To mimic the tenderness of depth
that recedes. The blockage released, we’ll wash
our hands of the rot, which counts
as separating these days.
Stefanie Kirby is a Pushcart nominated poet residing along Colorado’s front range. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Passages North, Portland Review, Rust+Moth, Pidgeonholes, DIALOGIST, and elsewhere.