Note to My Frailer Self

And note to this day’s demise in stray
holiday lights blinking green and scarlet
splendor across our neighbor’s window.

One might wonder about people who leave
decorations fraying in February’s premature
thaw. Is it ache for a stalling of the cockroach’s

trek along a kitchen trail of crumbs, crude
sign the party’s past done? Or desire to keep
their costume balls rolling long after guests

wander home, capes and cracked tiaras
dragged through moonlit dirt? I want
to invite my neighbors in, share our best

canned mushroom soup dishes because magic
comes in tender buttons turned communal.
We could suck up fading majesty together:

mistletoe and fake snow glittering like in old
dime store displays where a toy train spits
real smoke in fleecy tufts towards stars

threatening to wink out. I’m sworn to a shelf
life of dust and kitsch with a view down
roads where gulls squawk better news

of fish on a rust horizon, where baby crabs
swish in with the brine, squirming through
our iced astonished fingers. I don’t fear

my death, only my children’s skills getting
on without me, despite their learned
mac ‘n’ cheese expertise, their crayon

brilliance triple mine and yet half
baked in ability to navigate the wilds
where a high noon glare can glow your skin

otherworldly or shrivel it to scrap.
I’ll have to mind these butterflies
swarming their young heads, painting

the town in winged, heavenly fits. I’ll have to
follow the fluttering maps, coats of gold
stretched wide like strutting models

launched from freeway shrubs. I’ll have to
know that anything can happen—there’s so much
room for good, and we’ll flaunt it. Like them,

we’ll flaunt it while everyone’s looking.

---

Michelle Bitting won the 2018 Fischer Poetry Prize, Quarter After Eight’s 2018 Robert J. DeMott Short Prose Contest, and the 2018 Catamaran Prize for her fourth collection of poetry, Broken Kingdom, which was named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best of 2018. Her third collection, The Couple Who Fell to Earth (C & R Press), was named to Kirkus Reviews' Best of 2016. She has poems published in The American Poetry Review, Narrative, The Los Angeles Review, Vinyl Poetry, Plume, Tupelo Quarterly, AJP, American Literary Review, Thrush, and others. Poems have appeared on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, and have been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net prizes. Michelle holds an MFA in Poetry and a PhD in Mythological Studies. She is a Lecturer in Poetry and Creative Writing at Loyola Marymount University and Film Studies at Ashford U. See more at www.michellebitting.com.