The sky speaks a dialect of color
and the neighbor talks
as if her late husband
weren’t somewhere else entirely—
in the kitchen, ready for one final game
of never-forget-you.
They used to play dominoes every day in winter,
rude cold intruding at the windows
and in summer after seven, they would sit
on the too-small front stoop
stuffed with four black chairs
and try to barter love for time
as the sun moved adamant
past the column to the west.
She speaks as if, and in her eyes
I see the truth of it.
Somewhere else entirely.
About the Poet
Ian McFarland is a recent graduate of Grand Valley State University. Currently, Ian works as a lumberjack. His first published work has appeared in the online journals failbetter, and Plum Tree Tavern and is scheduled to appear in Right Hand Pointing, Amethyst and Dreich in the coming months.
For the first time in nearly five years, Vita Brevis is closed for submission. Read the full story here.
Vita Brevis Press. 
Lovely. I particularly liked the phrasing ‘the sky speaks a dialect of color’