by Tatiana Retivov
At first
There were cooties
everywhere,
on the cuffs
of your raincoat,
in your hair
which you cut off
to spite
to resist
the temptation to run
your fingers
through it non-stop.
Gloved you were
caught stroking
the harbinger
by your side
while he read
out loud
the pathology report.
Later, unbound, you did not let yourself be astounded too much.
(Ardor, is there enough ardor in your life, or is it conspicuously absent?)
Why, derailed by time and arthritis,
your limbs
are like the pillars
of an ancient ruin.
Yet there is a kind of nefarious joy
to be found
in the insatiable hunger
of chickadees
circling
their feeder
full of sunflower
seeds from last summer.
Tatiana Retivov received a B.A. in English Literature from the University of Montana and an M.A. in Slavic Languages and Literature from the University of Michigan. She has lived in Kyiv, Ukraine since 1994, where she runs an Art & Literature Salon and a small publishing press, www.kayalapublishing.com, that publishes prose, poetry, and nonfiction in Ukraine.