Let Today Not Be The Day by Krysta Lee Frost

                       Marketa CC



Let Today Not Be The Day


I submit, surrender to susurrus, call the neighbor’s
bluff. Cave the image that appears for the image
that transforms, transfixes. Give in, my whims
a whirlwind, pill box untouched. Call out: love
is a far cry from home. Hone my skills for leaving
what’s undone, hatch another plan of escape,
makeshift cities my tongue recites rote.
Dream of death and knock on wood, blame
superstitions, gawk at the email that arrives.
Drive deep into the wound, ponder pock marks
and stretch scar tissue as far as it can go.
Let the pot boil over or the oil jump from the pan.
Lie. Announce defeat on my hands and knees.
Blame my mind, blame anyone. Profess obsession
with undulation, unruly thoughts, ugliness.
Proclaim inevitability, that I am what wrecks,
what leaves the room a mess. Honor broken
glasses and pulled-out drawers, the rehomed
shirt that stays, shifts memory. Revere the loss.
Grow bigger than I’ve allowed. Grieve
what’s to come, what I can make happen.
Heave and split. Think of how many men, how few.
Think of no one. Let loneliness misshape, let it talk.
Hollow out, hand to stomach, hastening.

​

Krysta Lee Frost is a mixed race Filipino American poet who halves her life between the Philippines and the United States. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Margins, Entropy, Berkeley Poetry Review, wildness, and elsewhere. She is currently pursuing an MA in Creative Writing at the University of the Philippines Diliman.

---