Begin by noting that there’s no path to
the other side of rain.
The only way is perpetually through.
A bicycle on two wheels for
the first time. At the viewing, only the mourners
keep the emptiness at bay. Before and after,
a room of objects. If you
reached across, it would fall further
away.
Now it’s a tangled piece of metal on
the driveway. Kinetic, you said, fiddling with
a burner that won’t spark toward tea. We’ll try again
later. Someday. Outside, there’s water pooling
on the pavement. End by noting
that you can’t see it either. You read
its existence through the fading of distant objects
and how it feels when it sinks into the earth.
Cale Plett is a nonbinary, genderfluid writer who lives in Winnipeg. Their short fiction and poetry have appeared in Riddle Fence, The Malahat Review, Prairie Fire, Grain, CV2, PRISM international, Arc Poetry Magazine, On Spec, and elsewhere. They are currently working on a queer YA horror novel called The Saw Mouth.
