"You add rutabagas to your cart / as if you have nothing to lose"

What flavors do you choose?

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No Rush

by Todd Dillard

There’s a man down the block screaming
I LOVE YOU CAN YOU HEAR ME I LOVE YOU.
It’s a great twilight for confessing:
air heavy as hands on shoulders,
clouds dark as a lover’s sleeping
head on a spill of white sheets.
Sometimes I imagine you in your death
the way I imagine my old New York roommates
shopping at grocery stores in other states.
You add rutabagas to your cart
as if you have nothing to lose.
You rip open a bag of Life
Savers as you wait in the check out line,
popping one in your mouth before you pay
because who cares? You only have this one
death. The flavor you pick is FIRST THANKSGIVING
AWAY FROM HOME and the sweet of cabernet
and tryptophan and char prickles your tongue
like the salt in tears. Last night I dreamed
grief was an unlit room that I had to clean.
Just as I figured out how to navigate its darkness
I put something away and had to learn all over.
You were there. You were saying why bother
when the room was only going to get messy again
and I told you if you weren’t going to help
at least get out of the way. It’s quiet now,
the storm splits open like sacramental bread,
and I love you I love you. Can you hear me?
Write me back when you have time. No rush.

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Creative Reflection

I love that this poem imagines the dead loved one as a letter-writing correspondent. I love that the last words are “No rush,” though we know it’s indeed urgent that they hear a message back.

What would you say to someone who is no longer here, if you could?
When have you last screamed I LOVE YOU or said I love you I love you?
What would you add to your cart if you had nothing to lose?