Still, Days
While I ate my oatmeal, I saw Hope on the milk carton.
What’s missing: hope, the milk carton.
I tried to write hope into a poem, but couldn’t.
The words scattered like iron filings anytime my hands
came near them. Everything has its own magnetic field of sadness.
A friend told me there are mountains in Upstate New York
with no fossils, formed before life.
What feels impossible: time, to be stone-clean, to be
unmovable.
Today’s losses were the heaviest they’ve ever been.
I tried to punch pain’s ticket, make it leave on
clear tracks down my cheeks, but it wouldn’t.
Still, days. Still days. I am full of pain & fossils.
I think I gave up a few lines ago, the poem on grief,
or was it hope?
I turn off the lights. The poem glows.
From In the Middle of a Better World by Grant Chemidlin (Central Avenue Publishing, 2026). Copyright © 2026 Grant Chemidlin. Used with the permission of the publisher.
Grant Chemidlin
Grant Chemidlin is the author of In the Middle of a Better World (Central Avenue Poetry, 2026) and What We Lost in the Swamp (Central Avenue Poetry, 2023), a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. His poems can also be found in The Los Angeles Review, Palette Poetry, Quarterly West, and Tupelo Quarterly, among other publications.