Tipton Poetry Journal – Spring 2022
Lacuna L. Annette Binder The losses accumulate and the world constricts until the possibilities resolve to nothing but the moment you have together. Grace is the medicine lost or forgotten or left in the fridge. Grace is the hours spent on hold with insurers and receptionists and all the things you forgot to do and remember when you are in bed sleepless. It is the deer beside the road as you drive together to the doctor and the nickname nobody else uses and if she leaves she will take it with her and part of you will be lost, too, but not yet because she knows it still and it sounds like grace when she calls you by your name. There is so much beauty you feel obliged to show her, look look at the sky, at the tiger lilies by the wall and the grass bending and the strange yellow bird perched atop the tree, look, look, you say, and grace rises then like water from a well, it rises and fills the empty spaces.
L. Annette Binder was born in Germany and immigrated to the US as a child. Poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Stone, Town Creek Poetry, and JMWW. She lives in New Hampshire with her family.
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