The Sundering

by Stephanie McCarley Dugger

A dove, waiting

                 in the elm outside the window,

calls.                Every day

            he searches for her,

                 listens        for her reply.      I thought

I would understand love by now.

                                    But, I am featherless,

                                          too careful, too

            finely tuned

        for touch.

                           Yesterday,

new buttercups lined the walk.

                                    Today, they droop–

            a late spring freeze

ruining cell membranes,

                                                impossible

for the afternoon’s warmth

                        to put them right again.

                                                                        When you said

            finished,    I should have known

You meant for good.

                                                I watch

the seats at dinner

                                    empty out,

                        one, then another,

            and consider

                                                what battle is worth surrendering

                 to.                                            A household name

is still a name–                   diaphanous

                  and temporal.

                                           I cut ours into this table

            over and over,

                                                            to see

                         if I believe it.

                                                I call out to you

one more time

                                    to see if you will answer.

---

Stephanie McCarley Dugger’s (they/she) collection of poetry, Either Way You’re Done (2017), was published by Sundress Publications. Their chapbook, Sterling (Paper Nautilus, 2015), was winner of the Vella Chapbook contest. Their essays and poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Arts & Letters, Baltimore Review, Mid-American Review, Poet Lore, Spoon River Poetry Review, Tampa Review, and other journals. They teach Creative Writing at Auburn University at Montgomery and also serve as Creative Nonfiction editor at Los Angeles Review and Thirteen Bridges Review.