Life Sentence
T. Clear
I live in a house of scant beginnings,
of rupture and leakage,
splinter and rot. A wire
dangles to nowhere, something
cut mid-sentence, a thought
that will never complete itself.
A house of raveling sweaters
and unpainted stairwells.
Crack in the glass, hemless curtain,
the last bit of aluminum foil
flattened and folded one more time.
Awaiting the phone call, the letter,
a knock at the window,
crow at the door —
here lie all my unfinished cadenzas,
my abrupted couplets.
T. Clear is a co-founder of Floating Bridge Press and Easy Speak Seattle, a bi-monthly open mic venue. Her work has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including Cascadia Review, Poetry Northwest, Scoundrel Time, The Moth, The Rise Up Review, Terrain.org and Take a Stand: Art Against Hate. She is a lifelong resident of Seattle, and is on the editorial team of Bracken Magazine.