Content Warnings: Grief/Loss Afternoon Nap I keep writing poems on the precipice About the Author Veronica Nation is a poet currently residing in Vermont. Her work has been featured in literary journals such as Sink Hollow, The Allegheny Review, and Capsule Stories, among others. When she is not writing, Veronica enjoys going on walks to the lake, finding a new-to-her book, and drinking plenty of iced coffee. You can read more at her website www.veronicanation.com and follow her Instagram @rainandpoetry.
of sleep. Someone enshrouds me in fleece.
I get sick on the bus, crumple into the grass,
hyperventilate, leave my phone in the rain.
I get so sad sometimes I don’t know what to do,
and I can’t even turn my poems into hope-songs.
My therapist asks me to think of my brother
as a color. I try to explain why he was navy blue,
but she stops me. It is okay to think abstractly,
she says. I don’t need to rationalize it. I don’t know
how to let things be symbolic, left unreasoned.
She asks me to think of him as a shape, as a texture,
is it clear or opaque, does it move? And here I am
at home—as close to one as I know nowadays—
and I am static and purple and fragile as a doily.
This is how I get to love, my sister tells me. I feel.
And let ambiguity free me, and let me lose
the poems that fold themselves into my sleeping self,
fleeting and yielding.
