Next Question

For a long time, I’ve been writing about what I’ve lost.

Lately, I haven’t felt the pull to write about it—

but nothing else has come.

I wake up early, like I always do.

Coffee in hand, I stand at the window.

I see a single deer on the lawn,

so calm, like the morning—

and feel there’s a story there,

I just don’t have the words.

Grief—and the question when will this be over—felt like a splintered sign in a dusty old ghost town outside a deserted saloon, hanging loose, rattling at the mercy of even the slightest breeze.

That sign isn’t swaying in the wind anymore.

The ghost town has given way to something else—

a quiet sidewalk, say, in a New England seaside town.

Alive, but empty only because it’s early.

There’s a new sign now.

Properly hung. Freshly painted.

It nudges a different question—

what do I write about next?

Now that my memoir is finished and out in the world.

I stand there a little longer.

The coffee cools in my hands.

The deer moves on.

And the words…

haven’t come yet