Collector of Nows
Before words
before wrestling schedules
before stand and wait
before hours every day away from me
before height and curves and crushes
before he needed sleep
before villains stepped out of movies
before he broke
…he was new.
Broken like the vase that can’t hold
shape or water, feckless for the flowers
or broken like beauty, the stem holding
up hyacinth’s spike, silver of kintsugi?
Too young to know. Every pass
hits towards the latter.
Beat — a turn of luck
Step — a trick to cope
Rest — a passing day
Wait — a passing season
Dream on something gold
Learn to love some measure of blue
Heal as time draws maps on face
Not to rush a moment of
…the crisp, shifty now.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Eight Month Movement
Later they’d say you broke yourself
with a thud, a fall, unzipping.
That was after they’d say nothing
was wrong, after you turned blue,
a color I’ll never like the same,
the color of an overcast Valentine’s Day
morning. They won’t believe you jarred
nothing, jolted nothing. You melted, smooth
spilled — a puddle, honey on the floor.
I was there. Your bones forgot. You slipped,
a descending cello line, a receding wave
at low tide. In the hospital, you warmed
to greyish white. They didn’t know
the carnation pink of your lips
and sent us home. Two weeks later
You calm-spoke 104. I said very funny,
try again. But the thermometer cried
the same high note.
Back to the hospital, no time left but to
wait, offer codeine, oxycodone, notes
to miss school, miss dances, miss theatre,
a vacation to desertion. How can an ocean
still? How can blood petrify
and still, you squirrel jokes away?
Kristin Kowalski Ferragut is a poet-mom who teaches, writes essays, songs and stories, plays guitar, rides her bike, and hosts readings and open mics. She is author of poetry collections Escape Velocity (Kelsay Books, 2021) and Love Letters from Cuckold Creek (cyberwit.net, 2025), and the children's book Becoming the Enchantress (Loving Healing Press, 2021). Read her work, including her Mind’s Eye blog at https:// www.kristinskiferragut.com