When Some Grief Overtakes Me

By Ronda Piszk Broatch

               —with a line by Chase Twitchell

I imagine being held in parentheses.
I see the bubbles in my glass as escaping stars

in a universe curved like a magnifying glass.
Sometimes I mistake this for expansion.

When some bird I can’t name lights
on the suet I hope isn’t rancid, hanging from the bear-

bent pole the squirrels still climb.
When I’ve eaten the last chocolate, bingeing

the episodes of a mystery, where I know the detective
I’ve grown to love is going to die

because there’s nothing good can come of this story.
I ask, what is this grief, anyway?

Outside, some sun makes the of sky a color so hopeful
it breaks my heart.

I think of arrival.
When the bird I can’t name comes back.

When my love brings two bags of Godiva home from Costco.
When the detective sees his dead wife in the waves

of a north shore beach, and his eyes dim
and he smiles like he’s going home

as one more bullet enters his tweed coat—
I think at least one of these things is an illusion.

Outside, the sun tears holes in the clouds,
makes the sky that much bluer.

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Ronda Piszk Broatch is the author of Lake of Fallen Constellations, (MoonPath Press). Ronda’s current manuscript was a finalist with the Charles B. Wheeler Prize and Four Way Books Levis Prize, and she is the recipient of an Artist Trust GAP Grant. Ronda’s journal publications include Fugue, Blackbird, 2River, Sycamore Review, Missouri Review, Palette Poetry, and NPR News / KUOW’s All Things Considered. She is a graduate student working toward her MFA at Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writing Workshop.