A Poem By Laure-Anne Bosselaar, from Small Gods of Grief

PETITION TO BE INCONSOLABLE

Listen to this: rationalism--
what an ugly word, heady with the sagacious
rational, insufferably suffixed with ism.

I ban it from my vocabulary,
from the only thesaurus I trust:
the abridged one I protect when I make

a fist against my chest, the same fist
I brandish to the fourteen slats of the blinds
I slammed down just now

to stop staring at that immutable
mountain in which I know how to find
consolation, but I don't want it tonight.

I petition to be inconsolable
for today's fourteen sorrows--one per slat:

for a cloud at dawn tearing its heart out
trying to obscure the sun;

for that beech branch on Spring Street
whipped to shreds by each passing truck;

for the gardens I planted, then left;

for the photography of my dead friend
buckling more each day on the fridge door;

for the three times I stumbled today;

for my lubberly body,

the shame of it;

for the fist inside my chest

and for raising it, still, against my father;

for his shame of me,

for the shame of him
in me;

for spurning consolation
with fourteen slammed slats;

for another day of dying

and for welcoming this--against all reason.