Quilts

Yellow leaves lit by sunlight. A warm blue sky.
My cousin and I — silent.

Oh! I’m relieved. I am not my body.
There’s space in the living room where a chair used to be.

On a curb it decays — stuffing drops.
We decay — morphine drip.

My magic is very frayed
at the end of each season.

I wake hugging a ragged quilt
my aunt sewed decades ago.

Together my cousin and I
pack boxes of her glass figurines.

A sudden death but a good life
filled with forgiveness.

Curtains open
to let in the light.


Jen Currin is the author of five books, including Hider/Seeker: Stories, winner of an Independent Publisher Book Award and a 2018 Globe and Mail Best Book, and The Inquisition Yours, winner of the 2011 Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry and a finalist for a LAMBDA. Currin lives on the unceded territories of the Qayqayt, Musqueam and Kwantlen Nations (New Westminster, BC, a suburb of Vancouver), and teaches writing at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. More: jencurrin.com