Divination

By Traci Brimhall

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Fool that I am, I confuse dust motes for angels 
heralding my failures. Anxiety strokes my brain

with commandments. I predict the sinking
darkness that will someday call your name.

I forecast the way moonlight will fall from
the sky like a ladder and lift you away. 
 
I’ve been dying to tell you the skull is an icon 
of time and a black halo howls around you 

in my thoughts, but you roll your eyes and undress 
my confessions. Watching you water the garden is 

a master class in a theology of happiness, but 
no matter how the generations of roses bloom,
 
I lift each honeycomb like a reliquary from its box.
I forecast disaster at each internet search, every

tea stain in my cup. Each bite of dried apple
deepens the belief that darkness is coming soon.  

You kiss my eyelids and ask me to become an oracle 
of sunsets, foretell gorgeous and unborn days, 

call out the best hilltops for a beautiful tomorrow. 
I promise to try if you promise the next kiss will 

deserve the stars’ gossip. Let what happens next 
be sacred and overlooked, like the missing teeth 

of saints. Before the waiting angel falls from 
the sky to behold you, my love, let’s make 

a tomorrow of our hands, a dawn of our mouths,
our bodies the one future of light that matters.

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Traci Brimhall is a professor of creative writing and narrative medicine at Kansas State University. She is the author of five collections of poetry, including Love Prodigal (published November 2024 by Copper Canyon). She’s received fellowships from National Endowment for the Arts, the National Park Service, and the Academy of American Poets. She’s the Poet Laureate for the State of Kansas.

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