jeremy rich

Still Around

Her ghost still haunts my thoughts despite the fact

She left so long ago, her once a month

Red clouds reside below my sink and so

Do hairs that taunt like webs and stick to face

And clothes, the back of neck.  I want her smell

To leave my sheets, to grow un-cold beneath

The shadow cast by pain of her and him.

She flaunts the lack of need of me until,

She hears I’ve found another love to warm

My bed like rays of sun, erase the cold,

Destroy the dark that falls, cascades like wine

That spilt from sky above to flow unkempt.

My mind can now blur out her face, frigid

Ice melted away to dried salt trails.

Jeremy Rich has published several poems in collections like Watershed, Take Back The Night, Chantarelle’s Notebook, Ceremony, Thick with Conviction, Speedpoets, and others. He is currently an 8th grade Language Arts teacher in Colorado, but was a long time chef in California.