Annum by Sarah McPherson

I could call you February,
short and sweet.
Unfulfilled as yet; for now you can do nothing
but look ahead. Your plans
and dreams and games
grasp at the promise of what may be.

Shall I call you April?
Fresh-faced and wilful;
sun comes creeping like your smile
through intermittent showers of rain.
Teenage kicks and true love
shattered
into a curtain of beaded tears
you hang in your door.

Now I’ll call you August,
at your height.
Fruitful and welcoming; a home filled
with warmth and a basking cat
who shares your life.
But glancing sometimes behind,
to run manicured fingers
through tattered and cherished
remnants of youth.

And if I called you November
would you weep for the ending
or smile for the memories
and the wisdom
and the time?

 

Sarah McPherson is a writer of short fiction and poetry from Sheffield in the UK. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Still Point Arts Quarterly, Burning House Press, 101 Fiction and Paragraph Planet, and she was shortlisted in the Writers’ HQ Flash Quarterly Competition in July 2019. She can be found on Twitter as @summer_moth and blogs sporadically at https://theleadedwindow.blogspot.com/.

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