The Year of a Thousand Losses  by Marianne Hales (Honorable Mention Poetry)

1.
This churning river-lake eats
the bridge and the road and the house
and the subdivision and the town
and the pink scooter with a hand-drawn
face that comes to the name of Scooty.

Your mountain of a roof becomes
a mole hill and you instinctively brace
yourself as a refrigerator lolls by
and then a branch and then a quiet dog.
The water keeps roiling; you don’t cry.

2.
The newly rediscovered
pants that still button up but finally
convince you that breathing
is better than the perfect
shade of pink.

3.
The apricots matured when we had Covid
and lay rotting on the ground when we woke.

4.
Slowly pull another
block to set on the table next
to the teetering tower,
delicately slide
it millimeter
by millimeter,
imagining
the crash.
Pause
to exhale and hold
again with taut muscles
until the last
lip of the wood
grasps the status quo
(futile), grasps
the last moment
of uncertainty.
How much loss
can one
structure
withstand?

5.
The pots of Amaryllis line the porch. Some
will bloom, but some won’t. Their long, green
leaves look the same. None will tell you
not to hope.

6.
Seeing me walk in she smiles
and without alarm asks who

I am—the daughter she didn’t know
she had, a startling revelation

on an otherwise unnotable day,
a bird that lands briefly

on the perch outside the window,
the Monday, Wednesday, and every

fourth Sunday bird, who seems
a bit familiar in passing.

7.
The severed nail sits
delicately on your toe,
a linen napkin on the lap
of a proper lady,
and because the nail
bed doesn’t have hold
on it, the hot pink
painted keratin slides
off the toe’s satin skirt
and, ashamed, hides
under the tablecloth.

15.
When you plant a peach tree whose fruit you will never eat.

22.
The Grilled Cheese Please was nibbled to the crust
but the sweet potato fries
were still half full

when I turned for two seconds, and the plate was whisked away
by a server who wanted
to go home.

37.
Little air pockets across the bottom
of a pan of still water
pop languidly to the surface
like Tai Chi boiling, box breathing

in the wild, turning into running
and tumbling bubbles pushing
each other to the side

for the Black Friday sale
until the shelves are bare

and the quiet pan burns.

42.
No one sits
with him, no
one is sitting

on the edge
of the comforter
covered bed,

no one looks
at the purple
face, no one

reaches out
to touch
his head, no

one talks,
no one is
in the room

no one
needs
to be

no one
but me.

257.
At first it just feels uncluttered,
but as each piece of us
comes off the walls and out

of the drawers, the house becomes
more of a stranger and I
am unmoored.

598.
Crashing after twenty-three hours awake, a few deep hours don’t erase fatigue, but soften
the edges and dampen all that happens in the dream day that follows, a necessary ritual
before sleep is again acceptable.

765.
Two drafts of a hand-written letter fill
six pages of a spiral notebook, red
covered, in the top drawer of the night

stand to give him when he’s feeling
a little better or when we meet again,
or when the ashes are scattered

or it will stay in the drawer.

801.
The road is a true fork, with three tines splitting off the highway, bending
up and down in a way that only made sense once—

on the paperwork submitted to the Federal Highway Association,
reviewed by a man who doesn’t like math or fine print

and figured it would all work out in the end (it did). If you’re local
you knew to go north on the low road to see the positive affirmation

graffiti that wasn’t scrubbed for years: Chin up, fuzzy, you are loved;
Chin up, the sky is still blue.

827.
A three-year-old sapling with roots
too deep to move, nurtured from an acorn
(we pick up another acorn and start again)

915.
the Christmas baby who made you a living nativity
the tiny towhead with the oversized umbrella
the “little girls”
Molly
Annie
the actor
the writer
the poet
the not-poet,
the poet
10×6 on Skype
the far away
the near
the grey-white sheep
the ex
the lost
the loss

965.
When your metal posts are too deep to pull out.

984.
Listening to the labored
breathing of transition
through noisy hours
of visiting family and quiet
hours of the night watch,

remembering the last
piece of chocolate cake
(the most fitting final
meal), remembering
the last Christmas,
when no one knew

that the end of the year
was the end of a generation,
the last wisp of my Santa,
remembering singing
her to sleep to stop

the spiral of sundowning,
remembering when she slept
like the dead, remembering
every conversation
about God’s timing,
and then