You say we should wait—
It must have snowed all night or season,
we don’t seem to know
and there isn’t a clock;
I say then
we should
wait, I
trust you.
The white page is blank outside;
we haven’t heard in days.
There is not enough time for a whole new plot.
Inside, the wax dilates
wide around the candle.
We sit in the dark
and wait
and are separate,
but looking at each other—
Copyright © 2022 by Brian Tierney. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 31, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.