Anniversary

by Jason Irwin

All day I felt the need to call you,
as if there was something important
I should say.

How to explain this restlessness, this feeling of being stranded
when all around me the world is in motion?

                        *

You stopped breathing when I’d gone into another room.
The hospice nurse assured this was not uncommon.

I imagined that if you could you’d have leapt
from the window and run away like an animal,
embarrassed by your own helplessness.

                        *

This morning as I waited for the bus, snow fell
in the glow of a street light, like the afternoon you died.
It reminded me of fireflies swarming, falling,
yet never touching the earth.

Jason Irwin is the author of The History of Our Vagrancies (Main Street Rag, 2020), A Blister of Stars (Low Ghost, 2016), Watering the Dead (Pavement Saw Press, 2008), winner of the Transcontinental Poetry Award, and the chapbooks Where You Are (Night Ballet Press, 2014), & Some Days It’s A Love Story (Slipstream Press, 2005). He has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. He lives in Edgewood. http://jasonirwin.blogspot.com”

City of Asylum believes that All Pittsburghers are Poets. With the Poem of the Week series, we seek to increase the readership and appreciation of poetry locally by publishing poems written by residents of Allegheny County of all ages and levels of experience. In partnership with the Poetry Editors at Sampsonia Way Magazine, City of Asylum advances our mission to defend, celebrate, and build on creative freedom of expression. This project received a RADical ImPAct Grant from the Allegheny Regional Asset District (RAD).