“I never weep on camera. I have a little chamber that I go to, somewhere in the house.” – Carl Phillips
It has pictures of dead people
as you might expect, but also
the living, since thinking about
what may-will-can happen to them
is worth any kind of labored breathing,
any kind of grief. Repository of failed
projects, unsharpened dreams in dull
wrapping. Not only your own tears drip,
but the very walls, stone—if you can
manage, the expense is worth it—
droplets forming, holding tension,
falling plink and plunk to a basin of
collected tears literal & figurative,
when you are finished, as we all
must finish, lave your hands in that
holy saltwater and inhale the cold
of loss, exhale living and rising from
prostration before fate, live again.
David Galloway is a writer and college professor of Russian. Born and raised in Maryland, for the past twenty-five years he has lived in upstate New York. He is the author of poyms for people (Kelsay Books, 2021), and his poetry and essays have most recently appeared in Rattle, Into the Void, Prairie Fire, and Permafrost.