My Drunkard, My Navigator

for Anne Sexton

In your voice I hear a mother

reading, each letter a soft ushering,

a happy goodnight whispered in the dark.

And yet somehow it stopped, like the sea

would stop if the wind stopped

blowing, like small stones falling,

dropping into that dead sea: a soft splash

then nothing. You, stopped.

Your neck bathed in French perfume,

your fingers, long and elegant

as a white dress, your eyes thick

as wood, stopped; curls of  hair

full up with smoke clung to your face

as you cried, I imagine, and your cheek

fell against your own shoulder,

having nowhere else to turn.

And your heart, tired of being brave,

crawled down alone into that death,

that dark, pretty blanket you wanted

so badly and for so long.

Ellyn Lichvar’s poems have been published by or are forthcoming in The Louisville Eccentric Observer, The Louisville Review, Salt, and Poem.  She is currently in her third semester at Spalding University in the MFA in Writing program, where she is a student assistant editor for The Louisville Review.  She is a proud Louisville, Kentucky native and currently lives there with her husband and two dogs.