Sapphic Lament

TESS COODY-ANDERS

April 12, 2020

So call out the name of our grief: untamed arc.

Like the curve of your unshaved cheek, glimpsed only 

now through digital lenses flat as gravestones.

Miss you, I miss you

I do. I forget the hour. Days lost, like good

money after bad; who are we, but dead weight

on the scale of time? If I place my thumb there

just so, you appear.

It’s uneven, this match-up: globe against God

who, it seems, has forgotten us yet again.  

This Goliath, so small no sling will stop it,

tramples on, trip wires

be damned. Still, hope returns to find a sticky 

note where grief left open the door to heaven,

so sure we would find our way out. In His name,

Oh Lord, hear our prayer. 

TESS COODY-ANDERS is an MFA student in Poetry at Texas State University and currently serves as Vice President for Strategic Communications at Trinity University. A former journalist, her stories and editorials have been printed in numerous publications, but her poetry has always been a private endeavor - until now.