Howard Firkin
It’s Christmas Eve and everything is shut
except the hole you left. A hole in space.
A hole you’re choosing not to occupy
and I’m as scared of you as light is of
its prism. I see you and dissociate;
I shatter into rainbows, make a spectrum
of myself… your wake is human tinsel.
To everything a season: time to shop,
a time to deaden pain, a time to cut
and run. You’ve got to go. I’ve got to stop.

The only thing I change is where you’re not
and introduce your absence through the streets.
Occasional late shoppers flash past—spots
of neon in the darkness they complete.