It’s October. War has only just begun and you are
still alive, fixing us shabbat dinner out of
leftovers in your dead grandmother’s apartment while
I sit at a typewriter: The 1st love poem by Morgan Parker,
prominent author and single person, because in this
thin slice of universe, I see how it could be.
You let me pick music. I choose Freddie Hubbard’s First Light.
Beyond the balcony: ball field, marina, low tide, fear of God.
It’s the worst kind of closeness, the most foreboding,
to sit down to dinner with you, our private dusk, lavender
and dragonfruit, with nothing to report. I clear the table
of my paper and your pills, then place a black shell
and spent blue votive on the center doily.
You serve me whatever you have left.
Copyright © 2026 by Morgan Parker. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 31, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.
