Till the autumn tempests come to scatter the
flowers
--So brief your thoughts of her.
--from The Tale of Genji
So Brief Your Thoughts of Her
It is the time of the year
for our rituals: hanging up our coats, giving up smoking,
remarking on the fickleness of the sky. How strangely
we behaved. How often
we took for granted the
intricate signals sent from brain to mouth, the thoughts
forever tangled in our synaptic thickets. Sometimes, I
manage to think of you
perpetually dressed for
that first winter, telling me your name under the snow-
pregnant clouds. How wonderful your name, you lying
on the frost, lighting up
your menthol, pausing
between puffs to tell me this is your last one, you swear.
In Passing
When they buried her, they could not
understand it all: the aroma in that room
born from hot lead and lavender, the
shrill cries of the newborn rising from
the crib down the hall. Years afterward,
they maintained their habits: kissing her
framed photograph before leaving
the house, stacking the dishes after meals
in the same manner she had done.
When her birthdays came, they always
mentioned how beautiful she was,
how her hair was brighter than a
thousand suns.
About Andrew Mobbs:
Bio: Andrew Alexander Mobbs has been writing poetry for nearly a decade . He served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mongolia (2010-12) and then released his debut poetry collection, Strangers and Pilgrims (Six Gallery Press, 2013) . His work has also appeared in Deep South Magazine, New Plains Review, Ghost Ocean Magazine, Calliope, and others. He co-founded Nude Bruce Review, a nonprofit online literary magazine, in 2012. Despite everything, his true passion is walking around aimlessly in his moccasins.
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