I know the world is more
complicated than this,
but fragment to fragment
year to year to year
I am dragged towards how
often I am willing
to deconstruct the perspicacity
of our good life together
just to create more sounds
for Emily to make
as she wanders from room
to room. I’ve installed
screen doors all over the house
just to hear that thwack-thwack
any time she decides
to become the whole scene.
She leaves as she wants
& returns as she wants.
I’ve started new careers
to earn the money I need
to replace the aluminum
& fiberglass of the mesh
I’ve ruined pressing my face
through those doors. I have
not yet learned how
to focus on other gardens.
The bloom is in the house.
You expect me tell you spring
can vanish when I smell
the jasmine from her bottom
drawer in every single room?

Darren C. Demaree is the author of eleven poetry collections, most recently “Emily As Sometimes the Forest Wants the Fire”, (June 2019, Harpoon Books). He is the recipient of a 2018 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the Louis Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and the Nancy Dew Taylor Award from Emrys Journal. He is the Managing Editor of the Best of the Net Anthology and Ovenbird Poetry. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.