Reading in the Dark

Becky Kennedy

Under the grained
light, trees big
with evening,
and the red and blue book,
reading at night, winter
night on the wall maps
of Africa and the
ceiling soft with
fluorescent stars
and I say, it’s late
for reading and twice
I say good night
and good night, later
finding you mined into
the sheets with your little
light to read yourself
to dreaming, your
dream less light
against the night, dreamed
night less night against
the dusk to be, dark
yarn uncoiled

one seaside day; I
was going for a drive;
twice I told you goodbye
and goodbye; it was
the day you died.

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Becky Kennedy is a linguist and a college professor who lives with her family in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. Her work has appeared in a number of journals and in two chapbooks; her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared on Verse Daily.