Thinly Veiled

I steal my free time the way you once did, parked in a car
outside a grocery or waiting in line in a driveway,
silenced engine, pen seized in my good hand, finding
time enough to almost write a poem, again & continued, to you.
I can’t count the little losses that have gone before—

heartbreaks, that set of red & yellow dishes smashed,
a missing emerald ring that was my grandmother’s—
all of it practice. The brown-haired boy I waited for,
who toted me home on his motorcycle after school,
he’s still alive, but now he’s a ghost I might run into & see

merely the mathematic proof that our choices, like atoms,
split their seconds into splinter universes, changed from ours
like September leaves’ shady green changed to poppy or orange
or that dull brown of a quick cold snap. These aging days
come at me muscle-car fast, all curved roads & breathlessness,

& now I write my poems hand-to-mouth, addressed
from my car’s empty claustrophobia to you, hidden
behind that thinnest of veils—the ghost I most want
to run into. Death comes without appointment, all cliché
& ticking clocks. My hair, streaked with gray, frazzles in sun.

Emma Aprile lives in Louisville, Kentucky, and works as a copyeditor of literary fiction, nonfiction, and poetry for Sarabande Books and other independent presses. She holds an MFA in poetry from George Mason University. Her poetry has appeared in online and print publications including Shenandoah, Appalachian Heritage, Antiphon, and Belt Publishing’s 2020 collection, The Louisville Anthology, edited by Erin Keane.