As illness makes us live hour by hour,
revising our day as we go.
As winter plants a great snowy
foot in our path.
As glass baffles the fly.
How rosy can you be
without money?
As war when it comes. If it comes.
A boarding pass for a defunct airline
found in the lining of an empty purse.
Garbage blown up against
a wire fence—held there by wind.
The fence itself.
The slippery skin
between layers of an onion.
Is it the sort of day
to ask a hard question?
This isn’t the right time.
Suddenly the line goes dead.
We are without a map.
This appeared in the October 2012 issue.
Robyn Sarah's memoir, Music, Late and Soon appeared in 2021 Her collection, My Shoes Are Killing Me, won the Governor General’s Award for Poetry in 2015. She lives in Montreal.
