Surplus

by Anonymous

It’s Saturday, and we are so grateful to have a Sunday

tomorrow. We’ll sleep in. But here and now, the paintings

drip color like shipwrecked sailors shedding water, 

stiff limbs heaving onto an unfamiliar, beloved shore: 

Tyrian purple, crushed mollusk, royal profligacy, silk

beneath a tyrant’s feet. You crack a joke, I guffaw, 

mostly because it’s funny, but also because I love

you. Overabundantly. Language scrapes against itself, 

producing heat, a surplus of meaning. Spark: a surplus 

of light. Days continue to excess; the fidelity of time.

Sure, we die, but then someone else gets a go, 

and, like siblings, we get to perch on a ratty couch, 

watching intently, or napping in death’s next room, 

in its neat and quiet dark. Dark, a surplus of night. 

You broke my heart, and I found a new person

to be—like wresting unending scarves from a sleeve,

a polychrome cornucopia; I have a surplus 

of me, even though I tripped on the concrete 

beneath a cherry tree, whose hectic blossoming

reminded me of all the beauty I’ve ever lost. 

(I’ll stop evading; it only reminds me of you,  

which is the kicker: I never run out of you either.) 

Ragged petals smeared against my palms, 

sticky with blood—I looked like slaughter—

and look what you did—and I live, because

you can lose more than a liter and live, 

and not only live, but keep vigil, rapt, for

the golden light limning the leaves shuddering 

in a manic spring breeze, and Oh God. Oh God,

isn’t it worth it just because sometimes, 

on a good day, the music is almost enough.

Anonymous ‘25 wrote this for the most unoriginal reason you can write a poem.