Adam Clay
Everyone Trying to Start / Something New

I realize: what words we manage

are only as useful as how

the words manage to use us.

In the gnarls and twists of the world

and the twist of our lives alongside

the eaves of these moments,

I realize there are few things to say

for a day as heavy as this one: twenty children

taken away in Connecticut,

a dear friend gone in Denver. These days

remind me I’m allowed to be a human again,

and that everything is dialogue until it isn’t

—and there are stories, flashes of poetry,

and a nightcap which those

of us still here to remember are thankful

to have had. Of course, in the near and far away

we all wonder what we will wonder,

but this wonder allows me to drift

unapologetically—and perhaps thankfully—

into the gaze of sentimentality

when I think of how these losses

are all reminders of a sort: every record

flipped to its B-side is only grace

garnered with more grace.