The Coming
By Craig Kirchner
His wife rushed in looking like she couldn’t breathe.
They’re coming, the man at the gate told me.
They call ahead so he is not an issue. We have an hour.
He printed out all the poems and put them in a box,
buried them in the woods behind the condo,
gave his wife the key and a scribbled map.
When they come, they’ll take the laptop,
so I deleted and scrubbed the best I could.
Don’t lock the door, they’ll just beat it down.
Tell the grandchildren I was just trying to be me.
It wasn’t meant to be disrespectful or unpatriotic,
and that I love them.
If I return and things ever get back to normal,
we’ll dig them up and be careful who we share them with.
I’ll burn the ones about the camps and the purge.
If I don’t come back, and no one has yet,
you know I have loved you, as much as it is possible to love,
and never meant to ruin your life with my words.
Craig loves storytelling and the aesthetics of the paper and pen. He has had two poems nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and has a published book of poetry, Roomful of Navels. After a hiatus, he was recently published in Decadent Review, Yellow Mama, Chiron Review, The Main Street Rag, and several dozen other journals.
Photo credit: Ralf Steinberger via a Creative Commons license.
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