What’s to Become of Me

by Chris Forhan

 

And then a final light step:
sputtery inch of a candle

between my fingers, I’ll slip
from a sliver of sun

into black woods—
the owl’s, badger’s, mink’s,

then nothing’s. Lovely to think
of a last exhalation that way:

everything fraudulent, not
to be pitied, falling from me

like water into long grass,
all that’s left of me shrinking

to a wisp, a blink, an erasure,
till I’m only the absence

of sadness in one I loved—who,
startling herself with laughter—

for a moment forgets me entirely:
eyes, hands, voice, everything.

---

CHRIS FORHAN’S most recent book is a memoir, My Father Before Me (Scribner, 2016). He has also published three books of poetry: Black Leapt In; The Actual Moon, The Actual Stars; and Forgive Us Our Happiness. He has won two Pushcart Prizes and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and lives in Indianapolis, where he teaches at Butler University.