I won’t name you—after all, you could
be any. The constellations you compare to

your wife’s freckled back won’t coalesce
when someone’s skin is flecked

with buckshot. The creek I might once
have dreamed of wading in disappears

with a thunderstorm barreling down.
You wouldn’t smear Finnish butter on

the handles of the local food bank’s glass
doors—or would you? The ants I might have

watched march through sidewalk cracks
might as well be singed by a magnifying glass

or frozen by fluke May frost. You would
watch them all Tuesday afternoon, wouldn’t

you? That scent through your silk drapes is
hyacinth and obliviousness. You wouldn’t

sprinkle Himalayan sea salt into someone’s
well, would you? The birdsong in boxwood

hedges we might have listened for together
is drowned in protest chants. I heard

you aren’t sleeping well. Click on all your
Tiffany lamps, all your TVs, lullaby your

own ears with songs they love most, instead
of weeping anthems from outside insulated

walls. That’s what seems to work for me,
what lets me sleep inside mine.

Kerry Trautman’s work has appeared in various anthologies and journals. Her books are Things That Come in Boxes(King Craft Press 2012,) To Have Hoped (Finishing Line Press 2015,) Artifacts (NightBalet Press 2017,)To Be Nonchalantly Alive (Kelsay Books 2020,) Marilyn: Self Portrait, Oil on Canvas (Gutter Snob Books 2022,) Unknowable Things (Roadside Press 2023,) and Irregulars (Stanchion Books, forthcoming 2023.)