Some stories
last long past their appointed
hour, like light from expired
stars. Like leftover houseguests
or five day fish. We walk
toward remnants of the past
like refugees, pulled by the gravity
of guilt, the pulse of regret.

Is it too late
to unspool the alphabet
of cruelty, the bludgeon,
the blindness, the heated blade
of anger? Words cutting
like winter-raw wind.

Some stories
stick like late fall leaves,
wrinkled and ready, but
clinging to the apple tree
like a drowning man to a raft.
the drumbeat of regret
stranded in the long syllables of the past.
let the leaves fall.

Claire Scott is an award winning poet who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has appeared in the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review, and Healing Muse, among other journals. Scott is the author of Waiting to be Called and Until I Couldn’t.