Aftermath

by M. D. Berkman

I guess it makes sense
Now that you’re gone
To find myself
Doing some things
I chided you for:
Losing socks,
Dozing after dinner,
Forgetting faces 
(but not names),
Staying inside to read
On a bright, sunny day
Books by/about people
I can no longer talk to.

But these additions
To my focus and failings
(I remember faces, not names),
Seem more like subtractions,
Unbalancing ballasts,
Loosening moorings.
I asked you not to
Haunt my dreams,
Fearful that I wouldn’t 
Want to wake again.
Instead, you send me
Handsome strangers
To ferry me across
The river where you stand
Waiting on the receiving shore.

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M. D. Berkman writes poetry, fiction, and reimagined fairy tale, and blogs as NGO Representative to the UN Department of Global Communications for the Women’s National Book Association. Her recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Comstock Review, Jewish Literary Journal, Caesura, Aji Magazine, Earth’s Daughters, Stone Canoe, Glassworks, The Waiting Room, Muse, Front Range Review, Seems, and Steam Ticket, among other places. A native New Yorker, she lives in Manhattan among the books of her husband, Bob Contant, late owner of St. Mark's Bookshop.