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A Week Before You Die, You are Singing

Appeared in the Spring and Summer 2005 issue.

I didn't know how to take care of you.

Two months in Europe,
and the singleness of your hand, 
				limp in my own
is all I have learned.

The local wine has left me pink 
		with memory, 

left me with nothing
but a bathtub, gone grey,

and a vision of you, 
		at the 22 
				downtown,
					singing.  

Singing, like a kettle.

Singing, like a gull 
		rapping a window with its wings.

Singing, like a sky 
		shawled in the last autumn cloud.

You, in the lee of September,
singing Alouette.  

					And I was sitting,
looking at you, 
your fingers strung together like ribs 
of a gamebird
being split into two.

You, singing, 
and it's like Chattanooga in the summertime 
when the lights turn into a city of spires.

You singing, and we are almost home,
Tennessee like a sneeze that won't form.

You are singing, and I am counting 
krona for a tip.  

Alouette, gentille Alouette.
Alouette, you sing.  Je te plumerai.

View bio information and additional poems published in Half Drunk Muse on the author's main archive page.

Copyright 1999-2008 Erin Elizabeth Smith.