Molting — Blackbird Archive

← v13n1, Spring 2014

Easter weekend and I wake up beside not‐you.

No one knows how to dress for such weather.

Yesterday, I tried wool. Today, a parka.

Nothing warms my body.

I pray rebirth,

but mean second chance.

Every autumn a reinvention—

the allure of the semester system.

But it’s April and August’s fresh city

is all promise. This one’s still filled

with the places we didn’t go.

loss time identity aging

Matthew Hotham

Matthew Hotham is the author of the chapbook Early Art (Turtle Ink Press, 2006). His poetry has appeared in Salt Hill , Meridian , Copper Nickel , Third Coast , 32 Poems , and Harpur Palate , among others. He is a graduate student in the Department of Religious Studies at UNC–Chapel Hill and editor-in-chief of The Carolina Quarterly . Photo by Asia Morris, 2010