If a cardinal spotted on the teak table means someone is thinking of me, what does that say for you who never once looked up from your desk.

I should have taken your trembling hand and led you out past captive water still and all under the sandpaper sky.

I should have asked you to raise your tired eyes just this once, to discard the loafers, the argyles, and dip your naked toes into the grass.

Is there any other way to teach a man who thinks he holds up the earth how wrong he’s always been?

What if a cardinal 
picking through the ashes 
of last night’s fire 

means something else entirely 
that maybe it’s alright 

to forget you 

—Short-listed Finalist in MacQ’s Cheribun Challenge #2

Garrett Stack’s

first book is Yeoman’s Work (Bottom Dog Press, 2020). His poems were most recently published in Blue Earth Review, The Pinch, and Dunes Review. He lives, works, and will die Middle Western.

Links to his poetry and fiction at: https://garrettstack.com

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ A Friend From School, flash fiction in Issue 8 of MacQueen’s Quinterly (June 2021)