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Drifting
John Milkereit

slowly with you has yet no end.

You mow the lawn. You don’t smoke. You

cover your private parts. You wear a seatbelt so as

not to skid your face across a highway. No

freedom no more, you say. Dying has no visitation.

Chemo has no safe wait room. Proust said:

Love is space and time made perceptible to the heart.

Our hours are needles. Our space is stitched where

thread had been. Ants scurry inside the windowsill

reminding me we have to travel somewhere. I rescue

pinecones in the park for the holidays. I buy squares

of drywall for a home repair only to realize in the parking lot

a crow waits on my car roof. You aren’t near me today,

only the breath of fall collapsing and expanding.

An accordion begins to play.

—
John Milkereit lives in Houston, Texas, working as a mechanical engineer, and he has completed an MFA in Creative Writing at the Rainier Writing Workshop. His work has appeared in various literary journals, including The Ekphrastic Review, Panoply, Naugatuck River Review, and San Pedro River Review. His next full-length collection of poems, A Comfortable Place with Fire, is forthcoming.

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