Patricia Russo – Tomorrow
Every day
He sits in the garden
Tears off bits of himself
Throws them in the grass
For the birds
For the ants
And says
Tomorrow I'll fix that bed slat
Tomorrow I'll clean
The big mirror in the hallway
With crumpled newspaper and vinegar
The way your grandmother taught me
So we won't see ghosts
Won't dream of them
And our minds will be quiet
The way they used to be
But ghosts don't care about anybody's plans
Or the time of day
It's always now in the garden
It's always midnight in the hall
In my room the bed is new
And not a single person
Has died in it yet.
Patricia Russo has had stories in Fantasy, The Dark, and Clockwork Phoenix, among other places, and poems in Persephone's Fruit and One Art.
Photograph: Beach Find 1 by Jacelyn Yap
Jacelyn Yap (she/her) is a self-taught visual artist who ditched engineering to make art because of a comic she read. Her artworks and photography have been published by the Commonwealth Foundation's adda, Chestnut Review, The Lumiere Review, and more. She can be found at https://jacelyn.myportfolio.com/ and on Instagram at @jacelyn.makes.stuff.