Year of the Rat, Full Moon in Aries, and Coltrane Plays
Blues to You. I have folded
my sorrows like fitted
bedsheets: fraying elastic, the faint
scent of an ex-lover’s
detergent and my palms
holding the creases
against my skin, a way to live
into them. I have
folded. My sorrows don’t ask 
for any precision 
other than my hands 
against their hands 
mountains— 
of holding 
a mountain of folds smoothed out for the moon and 
the impossible season Mars makes of it. Have I folded 
my sorrows well enough into 
               the weather of the darkest 
               corner of a fading 
               restaurant and the small 
               talk caught in its walls? I have 
folded my sorrows. I have. I have 
forded the shallows dragging 
my sheets 
and their sweet un 
-foldings into 
another in 
-tractable 
year
Copyright © 2021 by Andrea Blancas Beltran. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 16, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.
