Sad songs for sad Sundays

My empty arms caught the morning rain

As I fell victim to this feeling of Sunday 

Comprising if battered photographs, cream paper and bruised fingernails 

When tried to unearth the lies I had buried years before

Wrapping them in crimson paper

With 'do not disturb' written over their bones

And I fell victim to this feeling of Sunday

Whisperings of new beginnings swung their legs on the window pane 

But there were doors that had come unstuck

I walked for miles that day

Their keys sit under drainpipe covers and rest in potholes

Your roses smell like decay

And Sunday feels impenetrable now 

Poem for Today

THIS IS A LETTER 

By Rebecca Dunham 

This is a letter to the worm-threaded earth. 

This is a letter to November, its gray bowl of sky riven by black-branched trees. 

A letter to split-tomato skins, overripe apples, & a flock of fruit flies lifting 

      from the blueing clementines’ wood crate.

To the broken confetti of late fall leaves. 

This is a letter to rosemary. 

This is a letter to the floor’s sink & creak, the bedroom door’s torn hinge 

      moaning its good-night. 

This is to the unshaven cheek. 

To cedar, mothballs, camphor, & last winter’s unwashed wool. 

This is a letter to the rediscovered, 

to mulch, pine needles, the moon, frost, flats of pansies, the backyard, 

      hunger, night, the unseen. 

This is a letter to soil, thrumming as it waits to be turned. 

This is a letter to compost, eggshell’s bone-ash chips, fruit rinds curved like 

      fingernails, & stale chunks of bread. 

A letter to the intimate dark—mouth-warm & damp as a bed. 

This is a letter to the planet’s scavenging lips

etched upon your face

she was a windy wednesday morning with the

rain dripping from dusted eyelashes, sighing at

the creak of trains pulling away in all

their melancholy. 

why aren't they allowed to stay anywhere for long

dawn broke and there was no reason

to stop, a solitary figure stretched into her horizons, 

maybe paradise exists amongst

the illuminated crisp packets and cigarette buts

holy in their second-rate glory