B. L. Bruce

THERE’S ONLY SO MUCH I CAN DO

There’s only so much I can do with my days in your absence. The
dishes are neatly stacked in the cupboards, your laundry neatly
folded and nested in the dresser. Twice this week I’ve mopped the
hardwood floors, such a sheen they reflect the moonlight.

I over-thinned the limbs of the maple you like so much, clipped the
branch holding the old hummingbird’s nest on accident. I tended the
winter roses ungloved, sucked at a bead of blood after a thorn
pierced my skin. I tasted you.

Is this not a kind of love? The waiting?
 

B. L. Bruce is an award-winning poet and two-time Pushcart Prize nominee living and writing along the California coast. Her work has appeared in dozens of anthologies, magazines, and literary publications, with poetry most recently appearing in The Lakeshore Review, Red Wolf Journal, Bivouac Magazine, The Sunlight Press, Riverstone Literary Journal, and Gone Lawn, among many others. Bruce is the founding editor-in-chief of the nature-centric literary magazine Humana Obscura and author of The Weight of Snow, 28 Days of Solitude, The Starling’s Song, and Measures.